When their mother goes missing in Spirit Lake, three half-sisters travel home to settle her affairs. The youngest sister, June, a documentary filmmaker, captures their bittersweet homecoming. As they settle back into her house, Isa takes up with June';;;s ex-crush Josh while several strange occurrences happen after they jokingly summon the ghost of a local legend. As the questions mount, the family begins to unravel and June finds herself drawn deeper into the true mystery of the lake.
In her debut feature, Smith is careful to toe the line between skepticism and belief, never allowing us to fully dismiss or embrace the mystic elements.
Swim is, among other things, a movie about sisters, who actually seem like sisters...This may seem like a small thing, but it's an aspect of filmmaking that's ignored often enough to be noteworthy when it's not.
Burdge, Lafleur, and Palladino are effortlessly believable as sisters, but that only makes it a shame that the script doesn't take fuller advantage of their innate chemistry.
