'Night Swim' Review: Supernatural Suburban Pool Horror Fails to Make a Splash
Nothing rings in the new year better than a Blumhouse January movie. Yet, the arrival of this year's fresh meat, Night Swim, had the worst fate: following up on M3GAN's iconic stunt walk last year. She kicked off 2023's greatness with a titanium slay, while this horror about a friggin' suburban backyard pool failed to make a splash for 2024.
Night Swim
PG13: Terror, some violent content and language
Runtime: 1 Hour and 38 Minutes
Production Companies: Atomic Monster
Blumhouse Productions
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Director: Bryce McGuire
Writer: Bryce McGuire
Cast: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren
Release Date: January 5, 2024
Exclusively In Theaters
The Waller Family, led by former baseball player Ray (Wyatt Russell) and his wife Eve (Kerry Condon), move to the suburbs for a fresh start. Their new home, complete with a backyard pool, seems perfect for their children, Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren). However, they soon discover a supernatural entity lies in their pool. As the entity begins to affect their lives, the family must unravel the secrets buried beneath their backyard before they, too, are pulled under.
Debut filmmaker Bryce McGuire is fortunate that I arrived at the theater with thalassophobia (fear of drowning) in tow. Ironically, Night Swim's sole effective set piece that spooked me occurred during the daytime. Halfway through, an eventful pool party takes place at the Wallers’, and it takes a turn for the worse when someone gets dragged under while oblivious partygoers are having fun. Going unnoticed in a place where everyone should hear your screams is genuinely frightening. Despite going for generic jump scares, McGuire's emphasis on the everyday setting matched a likely, identifiable, terrifying incident. This basis made Paranormal Activity into a franchise, and that one moment made it genuinely scary.
The atmosphere closely resembled a classic Goosebumps tale at the story’s tail end. Tell me the concept of a supernatural backyard pool that terrorizes a family doesn't sound straight out of an R.L. Stine book. When the mystery regarding the pool becomes the essential focus, Night Swim's potential reaches the deep end. The tone cramped up when it couldn't commit to telling a tight or at least entertaining story.
Night Swim's middling splash encapsulates the money-minded laziness of many New Year studio horrors. It's heavily telling that Night Swim was rushed into production after M3GAN's success, with every facet from character to mystery being soggy on arrival. If you're making a horror centered around a troubled family, give the members some character or give the audience a reason to root for them.
Ray, in particular, is at the forefront as the only person with a shred of character, which is grade-A bad-dad selfishness. Ray is so obsessed with returning to his former baseball glory that he deliberately ices out his awkward son Elliot. I'll be honest: I arrived late to my screening and assumed Ray's inconsiderate behavior towards Elliot was because he was possessed. I quickly learned that this was not the case.
The script attempts to focus on Ray and Elliot's “sports-oriented dad and awkward, lonely son” dynamic. It quickly drops any character for cheap scares, leaving you in the dark looking like a fool, screaming, “Marco!” Wyatt Russell tries to add life to the self-serving, monotonous tone as he tries to go ham in some scenes. At times, it had me laughing unintentionally, but the more he does it, the more it comes across as him not wanting to be there. The same goes for Kerry Condon, whose admirable depiction is felt in her way-too-good-to-be-here performance, although her thick Irish accent slips through ever so often.
All the film's scares rely on Waller's pool as the basis for the viewer's aquatic-based anxieties. Already a limitation from the jump, the film's sole scares are derived from this pool, and apart from daytime incidents, nothing necessarily comes across as frightening. Even as it involves ghastly faces with heavy prosthetics, the location's sameness does nothing in Night Swim's favor. Your engagement sinks to the ocean floor with each set piece done repeatedly.
Night Swim is relatively short yet so dull in its scares that I didn't know whether to compliment its silly climax for awakening me or mark it for its sheer stupidity. It resurrects one of my favorite horror tropes: "The people know what's haunting them but still get tricked by ghosts anyway because they're stupid, and we need this third act to happen somehow." God, that's what I love about white suburban horror characters. Their inconsistent white tomfoolery makes them exempt from criticism.
What else is there to say? Night Swim is a bland January horror flick. It brought the mid-ness of the genre back on track after M3GAN raised the bar. I want to make one last water-related pun, but it doesn't deserve my H2Originality.
Rating: 2/5 | 43%
