NIGHT SWIM (2024) review
written by: Bryce McGuire and Rod Blackhurst (story) & Bryce McGuire (screenplay)
produced by: Jason Blum and James Wan
directed by: Bryce McGuire
rated: PG-13 (for terror, some violent content and language)
runtime: 98 min.
U.S. release date: January 5, 2024
There’s a ghoul in the pool. That’s where we’re at as the horror genre kicks off the new year. In 2023, there were nine horror flicks released from Blumhouse Productions, kicking off with “M3GAN”, a somewhat satirical look at the horrors of AI and ending with “Five Nights at Freddy’s”, a dull video game adaptation that offered the horrors of animatronics. Now, the production company teams with James Wan’s Atomic Monsters for the first time (along with Universal Pictures), to give us…a killer swimming pool. To be honest, I’d see writer/director Bryce McGuire’s “Night Swim” just out of curiosity to see how bad it will be and/or if it’ll have any redeeming qualities. It’s not awful, but it doesn’t have nearly enough to redeem itself.
The movie opens in 1992, when we’re introduced to the suburban Midwest American home with a backyard swimming pool, occupied by a family consisting of a mother, her bed-ridden terminally ill son Tommy (Joziah Lagonoy) and her daughter Rebecca (Ayazhan Dalabayeva). One night, Rebecca looks out at the pool from her bedroom window to see it the underwater lights on and notices her brother’s toy boat buzzing around in the water. When she walks out and attempts to scoop up the floating object, Rebecca falls into the pool. She notices the underwater lights flicker on and off repeatedly and disappears after something pulls her under.
Flashforward to the present day, when we meet the Wallers, family of four. They’ve recently moved right outside of the Twin Cities and are looking for a fresh start after patriarch Ray (Wyatt Russell), who’s professional baseball career was recently sidelined after a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. He and his wife, Eve (Irish treasure Kelly Condon, delivering a convincing American accent), and their two kids, Izzy (Amelie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren), are moving into a rental home with a large spring water pool, thanks to their real estate agent (Nancy Lenehan). Ray is looking forward to using the pool for physical therapy and is looking forward to the rest of the family using it as well.
Strange things related to the pool begin to happen to everyone in the except Ray. Eve and both kids all have experiences in which they either see someone at the surface near the pool’s age while they’re underwater, or something pulls them under, or they’ve even heard voices from within or around the pool. It’s hard for all of them to admit something is happening, because it’s just so bizarre. Then they find their cat’s collar floating in the pool – because every family pet has to mysteriously disappear in haunted house movies. But for Ray, it’s as if he’s found the Fountain of Youth. He notices a laceration on his hand has absolutely closed up after using the pool and both his doctor seems baffled by the amazing turn around his condition is taking suddenly. Yes, he’s getting better and the pool has something to do with it, but at what cost?
The more McGuire offers answers to such a question, the more “Night Swim” starts to drown in it’s own unintended silliness, much of which is cranked up in the movie’s third act. Early on though, there is a moment of fresh humor that’s injected when an eccentric pool technician (a wry Ben Sinclair) shows up to take care of some supposed septic sludge, and winds up babbling about recreational water safety and the natural spring underneath the pool. That character’s presence is welcome and I was kind of hoping he’d come back as an updated version of John Goodman’s exterminator from 1990’s “Arachnophobia”, but alas, it’s back to the horror tropes viewers expect.
There are subplots with the Waller kids that come across as standard procedure in this particular horror subgenre – that being: family plagued by some unexplained creepy thing. Izzy is unable to fully move forward with a crush she has on her classmate, Ronin (Elijah J. Roberts), who coincidentally invites her to join a Christian swim team, after the pool freaks her out one night while he visits. Young Elliott also has problems underperforming on his local little league baseball team and a rejuvenated Ray showing up (and off) doesn’t make matters any easier for the boy. One gets the idea that he already has a hard time living up to his father’s legacy, but it doesn’t help when Ray knocks one out of the park like Clark Kent.
But hey, you know what a new-to-the-neighborhood family with a pool needs to do? That’s right, throw a neighborhood pool party and invite everyone they can think of. Of course, something is going to happen. Sure enough it does and it’s at this event when that real estate agent comes clean with a concerned Eve and informs her what she knows about the pool. This leads to Eve tracking down the former owners of the house…the ones we met as the movie started. Eve visits the home of Kay (veteran actress Jodi Long doing a lot with very little) and the more time spent in this elderly woman’s presence, the creepier things get – right up until the last few seconds of the encounter, when the movie plays to recent horror tropes showing black stuff pouring out tear ducts and nostrils. Credit to both actresses for their work in this scene, despite the ridiculousness the material winds up suffering from.
Overall, the mystery at the heart of “Night Swim” never really pays off considering the decent set-up by McGuire. There’s a wicked and weird pool, but the ambiguity of it stays in the murky deep end. Explanations are vague and the movie winds up falling into eye-rolling conventional peril, involving the Marco Polo water game, mind you.
Before viewing “Night Swim”, I learned this is a feature-length version of a three-minute short from 2014 that was directed by Rod Blackhurst and written by Bryce McGuire. Upon further research, I discovered that the simple premise of that short short was that of a woman (Megalyn Echikunwoke) swimming in a suburban in-ground pool at night. She soon starts to feel as if someone – or something – is watching her from both inside and outside of the illuminated pool. Then the underwater lights flicker, which understandably frighten her and something grabs her and, after a struggle, she’s gone into mysterious depths. The lights turn back on and no one or no thing is in the pool. That sounds intriguing, but even as a short it doesn’t seem like it’s doing anything significant apart from giving a frightening sensation. That’s not enough for a successful short and now the feature-length version shows that it doesn’t have enough to expand off that. But hey, check the short out for yourself here.
With such a conceit, “Night Swim” could’ve benefitted from being either weirder or funnier. The fact that the movie doesn’t close out with R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming” over the end credits, but then again I doubt if Michael Stipe or any member of the band would give their authorization. While it seems like just about any horror theatrical release will do moderately well opening weekend, it’s doubtful this one will generate any waves after that. One thing’s for sure, it certainly won’t hurt pool sales.
RATING: **
