Swimfan (2002)

Waste of time

One of my all time favorites.

A different way of telling a story

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

High-school swimmer Ben Cronin (Jesse Bradford) is good looking, popular, has a pretty devoted girlfriend, Amy (Shiri Appleby), and a promising future—kinda makes you sick doesn't it? But after new-girl Madison (Erika Christensen) sets him in her sights, seducing him in the school pool, his perfect life gradually turns into a living hell.Yup, it's a teen version of Fatal Attraction, with middle-aged Michael Douglas replaced by hunk Bradford and scary Glenn Close substituted for curvaceous but clearly cuckoo Christensen. Formulaic, predictable and undemanding, there's very little here to surprise the viewer, and the ease with which Madison goes about her business requires suspension of disbelief on a massive scale; despite this, Swimfan still manages to be a fun little thriller, helped immensely by surprisingly solid performances from the young eye-candy cast and effective direction from John Polson, who at least executes his well-worn clichés with a degree of style.

This teenager 'Fatal Attraction' clone has left me torn. I really like the first part where the main character Ben is seduced by Madison; the new kid in town. Although you know straight away that she is going to seduce him you wonder whether Ben is just oblivious to this or that he does know, but that he is young and foolish, and just a man....The plot then unravels nicely and you are sucked into the story big time. Alas halfway the movies quality changes dramatically. Madison becomes from intriguing and scary to pathetic and stupid. The whole story becomes more and more unbelievable as the movie continues, which is a shame really as it started out so nicely.The acting was actually quite good. Madison (Erika Christensen) is perfectly cast as she looks seductive, innocent, bitchy and devilish at the same time. All the other actors are quite good too. In short, not too bad, but could have been a lot better.

A rather poor story. Two nice young people love each other. The boy is in the swimming team and the girl is happily going along in her life of work and school. Then a vulture arrives. She is blonde, she is cannibalistic, she is ready to kill to possess what she wants and she does not take no as an answer to her orders. Then the boy says yes under pressure and she will not accept his no later on and will kill everything she can lay her hands on : friends, girl friend, mother, and the list could go on forever. The boy, with the help of a couple of people, bait that vulture with the coat of one she had tried to kill, and she is tricked into revealing her real identity, and even so she is not finished and she takes advantage of an amateurish cop to commit a couple more crime. What do we get out of this melodramatic horror? A complete feeling of emptiness that gives you a taste of ashes in your mouth, the ashes of something that is dead somewhere. Crime is never mechanical. To kill someone requires some imagination. In this case it is nothing but a bad habit that no one can cut out of her.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

As a fellow reviewer wrote, this is a "Teen Fatal Attraction". Don't fool yourself. "Swimfan" used the same concept but with teens. Wise movie. FA was a rated R movie that had an excellent box-office reception and it's one of the most popular movies in the past 15 years. "Swimfan" was also very popular and successful mainly because the concept was well accepted by teens.This is an entertaining flick that sincerely, many young men would like to experience. I mean, who would reject such a beauty like Erika Christensen? I mean, even having Shiri A. as a girlfriend makes you consider an adventure.There are some sexy steamy scenes like the one in the pool where Christensen's character, with sexy moans and everything seduces Ben. Also, when she says "panties" is a major turn on. Seriously this is an enjoyable B-flick that you should watch if it airs on T.V.