Preview screening of The Swimmers

I am a big fan of horror movies especially those directed from Thailand, so when Jasmine extended her invite to me, I gladly accepted it. ‘The Swimmers’ is directed by my favorite Thai director, Sophon Sakdaphisit, and I love how the story unfolds as he always gives the audience a plot twist at the end of the movie.

Don't get the genre wrong, although it is categorized as horror, but it is not your typical ghost movie. In fact, this movie, 'The Swimmers' is a psychological movie with added horror content to it and it brings out a message about teen sex.

*Major Spoiler Ahead!!*

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The movie centers around a love triangle of a teenager named, Perth (starring Chutavuth Pattarakampol) who is one of the top-ranked swimmers in his school's swimming team. He is fond of Ice (played by Supassara Thanachat), the pretty girlfriend of Tan (starring Thanapob Leeratanakajorn) who is the rival of Perth in the swimming team and also Perth's closest buddy.

The story unfolds further when Ice found dead at the bottom of the school drained diving pool, and a series of the haunting encounters begins. The smashed pool tiles were replaced, leaving a slightly darker blue spot where it was said to believe where the corpse was landed during the suicide incident. After Ice's death, Perth started to encountered strange occurrences and his buddy, Tan is angry and determined to find out the culprit behind the whole tragedy incident. He got Perth's help on the investigation. 

The movie keeps the audience well-balanced with the plot structure of toggling back and forth from the present and weeks before Ice’s fatal drop.

I also loved watching Perth and Tan’s development from friends to enemies throughout the show. Tan's suspicions of Perth grew further while trying the recover the data of Ice’s shattered phone, as well as when trying to find the password to log in to Ice’s Facebook account. Perth, on the other hand is trying to delete some evidence from her Facebook page.

Some strange highlights in the show are that while Perth was practicing alone in the pool, the scene makes it feel that there is someone swimming beside him. At times, Perth sees silhouette of a person standing still on the diving platform even though there is no one else around at the pool area.

The most bizarre scene in the movie is that Perth believes that he is pregnant as he eats a whole tray of raw eggs in one go, as the raw eggs become a metaphor for pregnancy, and Perth’s stomach become bigger indeed. The weirdest scene which I can’t comprehend till now is that why the corpse was found hanging at the doorway.   

The horror content is rather low, but there are many scary scenes in the movies. I couldn't take the scary sound effects as it made my heart beat faster. The sound from the movie makes it scarier and thrilling when watching the movie.

I have the privilege to watch the preview screening of 'The Swimmers' all thanks to Jasmine, and the premiere date is on the 28 August 2014.

***photos credit to Google Search***