Pool horror that never takes the viewer out of the shallow end
Well, it’s here. The fusion of Blumhouse and James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster is official and both are under one umbrella. How do we kick off this celebration? With the release of a movie about a killer pool. Night Swim is the first major horror movie released in 2024 about a family shopping around the real estate market for a new home that fits their specific needs.
What they find is a pool with a past, and what it leads to is a sorry attempt at blending aquatic horror, ghosts, possession, and the tropes of the classic Amityville Horror film for all of us to laugh and shrug our shoulders at.
For starters, let it be known that what James Wan and Blumhouse have done in the past with their collaborations is pretty remarkable. So seeing them pair up for a big ol’ bash of genre movies now is going to be a real treat for genre fans for however long they can make it last. That being said, Night Swim ain’t it for a way to start things.
The film stars Kerry Condon and Wyatt Russell as husband and wife and parents to two growing children. Russell plays Ray Waller, an ex-pro baseball player now struggling with looming multiple sclerosis. His wife, Eve, is supportive of him now taking time to get his bearings as he deals with the new challenges ahead. They buy a house to fit their needs, and yet even on day one of the walk-through, Ray nearly drowns in the pool. You’d think that would be a deal-breaker.
What unfolds from there is the discovery of what this pool is capable of doing. It has a force lurking underneath it that wants to pull you further down below. For most of the movie, we see what actually haunts the unground pool in shots where we see figures out of focus. It’s alarming and tense, but the scares are cheap.
Night Swim could live in the Insidious universe, but it never matches the intensity of what we saw in those films, and as it goes on, it gets very soggy in plot and meanders a bit making the viewer not really care for any danger that these characters are really in.
We have seen these tropes hundreds of times now. A house that had someone die in it. As a matter of fact, the incident that springboards the rest of the plot is right there in the first five minutes. Nothing scary, nothing new, and a little bit of Jaws-inspired shots in it, except it’s in a pool.
There is also only one so-called night swim in the film when Ray and Eve’s daughter takes a dip with her boyfriend of sorts and encounters just how dark and deep this mystery goes. You’d think at this point, as the world of what this pool is starts to expand, you may want to ring it in a little bit. There’s just too much overload of what is trying to scare you here that anything from the second act on makes you cringe.
However, let’s not discredit director Bryce McGuire here. He did what many directors wanted to do and didn’t always get the chance to do. He turned his short film into a feature at one of the best production companies in Hollywood. McGuire, who is also a writer on the film, tries to explore special themes in the film that draw the audience in a little more.
Night Swim is about things like sacrifice, and the pool is a metaphor for that. Ray is a character who needs to let go of the past and take care of what he has now with his loving family. What is a metaphor for that? A group of people who love one another and look out for each other, all together, create memories in the backyard pool.
Now enter the fear and dread of something like that that is always in the back of our minds—the conformity and sacrifice of those decisions that one can be criticized for. That’s where Night Swim thrives. It feels like a Stephen King tale of an American family, and something that brings a family together can also tear it apart.
Still, Night Swing takes great strides at those ideas, but in the end, it all kind of drowns. The monsters of the deep end don’t have much of an impact on us, and the family drama side of it does not leave audiences heartbroken with the choices that must be made.
The third act reveals where this poltergeist of sorts originated from, and it comes off as laughable at best. It’s the first week of January, and Night Swim is already bound to be like that pool toy that floats to the bottom of the pool and gets left there. We’re going to forget about this one as the year goes on.
Read More: Night Swim Ending Explained
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Verdict - 3/10
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