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Fear Subsides in The Midnight Swim’s New Collectors Edition Blu-ray

If Yellow Veil Pictures were a baseball team, they’d be the team to bet on because they are batting a thousand. YVP consistently finds and releases some of the greatest genre, and other, films that are made by up-and-coming filmmakers. Their goal to present and preserve the finest of cinema around shows how much they truly care about the art that can be created, rather than the endless drivel big studios release. One of their latest releases is actually a re-release of Sarah Adina Smith’s (Buster’s Mal Heart) criminally underrated Found Footage/POV film The Midnight Swim on BluRay, with some juicy extra features.

June (Lindsay Burdge) tests out her new underwater camera, foreshadowing what is to come

The Midnight Swim is an astounding film that pushes the limits of what horror can be and presents itself as an elevated family drama with intense moments of horror. Sarah Adina Smith’s debut feature film is “embedded pure POV filmmaking,” (her words in The Three Sisters featurette) which lends a whole new level of emotion and personality to the film. From its hypnotic opening shot to the final ambiguous moment, The Midnight Swim is an unrehearsed semi-improvised masterclass in guerilla filmmaking.

Two of the special features are two short films Smith has made. The first is the never-before-seen The Phoenix and the Turtle, which is delightfully weird, and a good look as to what her style will evolve from. The second short, The Sirens, feels experimental and raw and shows even more that her style is transforming from The Phoenix and the Turtle as there are a few big ideas that carry over from the former to the latter. On top of all of this, the nearly 30-minute featurette The Three Sisters provides an in-depth look into the creative process behind the inception of the film as well as taking a journey through the very fluid filmmaking process.

Isa (Aleksa Palladino) and Josh (Ross Partridge) swim, before trying to goad Annie (Jennifer Lafleur) into joining them

On top of all of this, the collector’s edition Blu-ray will come with a beautiful booklet that has an essay from film critic Justine Smith, as well as an essay from culture writer Nicole Cliffe. You can check out the full list of bonus features below:

  • Commentary with Sarah Adina Smith, Aleksa Palladino, Lindsay Burdge, Jennifer Lafleur, and Ross Patridge.

  • Sarah Adina Smith’s 2009 short The Sirens (13’)

  • Sarah Adina Smith’s 2007 never-before-seen short The Phoenix and the Turtle ( 2’)

  • Special Featurette: The Three Sisters; A look back at The Midnight Swim with Sarah Adina Smith (28’)

  • Limited Edition Booklet Featuring:

    • Never before seen The Midnight Swim artwork drawn by Sarah Adina Smith

    • Essay from film critic Justine Smith.

    • Essay from culture writer Nicole Cliffe.

  • Reversible cover art and slipcover by Aleksander Walijewski

  • Theatrical Trailer

  • English Subtitles

The Midnight Swim is available for pre-order and will be getting a digital release on January 25th, 2022. If you’re a fan of family-related psychodramas, this film is for you.

The new stylized Yellow Veil Pictures cover for the BluRay release of The Midnight Swim

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Written by Brendan Jesus

I am an award-winning horror screenwriter, rotting away in New Jersey.

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