Swimfan

Wholly meritless, unspirited teen high-school thriller destined to hit the bargain-basement end of the video market before it knows it’s born, Swimfan is a truly lamentable enterprise, despite the recent observation of a respected mainstream film mag that “young audiences will lap up the mix of nubile teens and cheap shocks”.

Loosely based around its hero’s exploits as a promising swimmer, but basically an excuse to trawl through all the handy teen stereotypes from jock to nerd and every semi-defined shade in between, it’s the epic story of Ben (Jesse Bradford), a staggeringly unappealing musclebound meathead who has it all: promising career, trophy girlfriend, etc. etc. That is, until the corpses start piling up...

It might seem, between the likes of Scary Movie 2 and Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th, that the worst excesses of the horror-spoof heyday have come and gone, but its braindead influence is still clearly visible in any number of very recent ‘teen’ flicks, of which Swimfan is by no means the worst (or best) of the wretched pile.

Still, take pains to avoid where at all possible.