Swimfan: Review By bcloutier

Going in to this film I wanted one thing, when I wrote my review I wanted to be able to say something different than everyone else. You see, before the film opened I read many reviews. And each of them said something to the effect that Swimfan was basically a teenage version of Basic Instinct from the early 90s. In my mind I was hoping they were all wrong. The commercials and all the prerelease media I had seen gave me hope. I went in looking forward to seeing a very dark, creepy, and kick ass thrill ride of a film. Unfortunately, all those reviewers were right. If you haven’t seen Basic Instinct then go rent it. If you have then go rent it again because Swimfan is, in my opinion, a very close copy.

Jesse Bradford (Clockstoppers, Clueless) does an excellent job as champion high school swimmer Ben Cronin. Basically the story is that one night he makes a mental error and has a one night stand with a dark and lovely mysterious young women. That young woman is Madison Belle, played by Erika Christensen, turns out to be waaaay more trouble than she is worth. He cheats on his girlfriend with a psycho and the psycho wants to keep him for good. Ladies and gentleman let the stalking begin. Erika Christensen is excellent as the stalking teen out to prove that if she can’t have her waterboy than no one can. I can honestly say that she is the best part of this movie. The character is creepy, evil and most importantly incredibly sexy, everything you want in a psycho stalker. Man, how cool would it be if this able newcomer to the stalking game teamed up with Glenn Close (Basic Instinct), the original, for an all out stalker throw down! Forget Freddy Vs. Jason I want to see this now!

Overall the film was decent. If you like creepy dark teenage thrillers then this is your bag of tea. Although its not the best entry the world has ever seen in this genre it’s by far not the worst, that is a whole other column. The acting is good, the pacing is right, and the tone is the perfect amount of creepy and dark. I still think though that Basic Instinct is the perfect stalker movie and Swimfan is a nice, decent attempt at redoing it. After all, imitation is the fondest form of flattery.