SWIMFAN

A high school swimming champ has what he thinks is a one-night stand with a sexy new student who then proceeds to stalk him.

CAST: Jesse Bradford, Erika Christensen, Shiri Appleby, Kate Burton, Clayne Crawford, Jason Ritter, Kia Joy Goodwin, Dan Hedaya

DIRECTOR: John Polson

"Teenage boy with teenage girlfriend beds teenage girl who isn't his girlfriend. The latter turns out to be psycho. (She has a fatal attraction.) Add pet bunny. Stir...it's too bad that director John Polson didn't have either the will or the foresight to push the film to full-blown camp...Neither Polson nor screenwriters Charles Bohl and Phillip Schneider, or anyone else connected with the movie, seems to really like kids. Here's hoping the kids feel the same." --Manohla Dargis, The Los Angeles Times

"'Swimfan' is not 'Fatal Attraction.' Or maybe it is, with a younger cast but the same lesson Michael Douglas learned the hard way--that a one-night stand with a psycho is the gift that keeps on giving...The good news in this movie is Erika Christensen, the hot young actress who played a well-off druggie in 'Traffic'...Christensen is a bold actress with chilly frosting. For much of the movie, her character seems determined, sophisticated and bemused, rather than just plain nuts... 'Swimfan' is surprisingly serious for a teen movie in which people die or become otherwise incapacitated. It preaches against the perils of infidelity like a humorless sex-ed class." -- Jami Bernard, The New York Daily News

"Until the story runs amok about two-thirds of the way into the movie, 'Swimfan' is a reasonably tingly and credible stalker movie...[Jesse] Bradford oozes a bland earnestness that is typical of stars of his generation...Any real-life teenager facing such a catastrophe would flail and fall apart. But today's male teenage stars are rarely allowed to cry on the screen. It's too messy, unheroic and bad for the box office." -- Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"The traditional male fear that an 'easy' girl may be crazy, perhaps murderously so, is what gives 'Swimfan' its initial effectiveness...Unfortunately, 'Swimfan' falls victim to sloppy plotting, an insultingly unbelievable final act and a villainess who is too crazy to be interesting...About two-thirds of the way through, a stupid, hyperbolic sensibility takes control of the project, running it screaming off the rails." -- Jonathan Foreman, The New York Post

"Except for the details, nearly everything in the movie is familiar. And even some of the details are familiar...But the young cast tries so very hard. Christensen, with one of those roundy-round faces and the heart-shaped lips and baby-blue beamers of the cutest cherub, turns out to make a very creepy psycho. When she cranks up the smile, her whole face lights up and she's every dad's dream daughter. But when the voices in her head take over, those blue eyes go dead, as she's closed out all moral considerations and exists solely as a slave to her own appetites." -- Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post