Directed By Bryce Mcguire

Starring – Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amelie Hoeferle

The Plot – A former major league baseball player (Russell) forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Condon), teenage daughter Izzy (Hoeferle) and young son Elliot (Gavin Warren). Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.

Rated PG-13 for terror, some violent content and adult language.

Night Swim | Official Trailer (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

If “Night Swim” has any chance of riding the waters to prominence in the eyes of its battle tested audience, it comes in the form of casual potential littered in a few distinct areas throughout the production that at least proves some kind of effort went into its summoning. The first is easily within the confines of the characterization, which the film spends ample time fleshing out as a means of investing into the paranormal plight that this family faces in both the vulnerabilities of the time honored cliche of them moving into a new house full of secrets, but also in the aquaphobia of swimming pools themselves, which McGuire illustrates with mystique in ambiguity that atmospherically conjures something unsettling to the things that go bump in the night. One could certainly argue that too much time is spent on the characters in this film, especially in the dominance of backstory over horror components, but for my money I appreciate a film that puts values in its characters long before its conflict, and because of such, I found myself at least invested to them in ways that kept me from celebrating their respective terrors, as I do in a majority of contemporary horror films. In addition to this, McGuire’s direction frequently jaded me, but some of his techniques of camera work certainly utilized the immensity and isolation factor of the primary setting, feeding into the overwhelming sense of dread that surrounds the characters each time they seek a dip in its toxic waters. In particular, the wide angle shots effortlessly trigger the vulnerabilities of the characters, with equally integral surface level depictions of the water level to not only immerse ourselves in their dreaded disposition, but also feed into the unpredictability of the environment, which casually loses itself in size and scope the longer the film persists. Lastly, Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon are far too good for this film, especially in the unwavering commitment to articulance that they give each of their respective characters. For Rusell, it’s a chance to play against type in the early parts of his career, with an underlining yearning and regret in a life that didn’t turn out as expected for his character. Granted, the charm of familiar charisma from Wyatt still seeps in from time to time, but never at a sacrifice to the molding of the character’s backstory, which he embraces with arms wide open. Condon is given the heavy lifting in the form of dramatic deliveries, and just as she did in 2022’s “The Banshees of Inisherin”, she seamlessly rises to the occasion, with unbridled nerves as the head of the household who watches her comfort zone condense with no means of how to handle it.

NEGATIVES

This is the part where I usually say that this movie based on a Youtube short of the same name doesn’t work when stretched to be a 93 minute feature length presentation for silver screen cinema, and while that is the case with a film that is every bit boring as it is lazy, the aforementioned three minute short was never that compelling to begin with. So where does that leave us with this incarnation of the film? Well, as previously stated, it’s a sluggish affair, with incohesive editing and prolonged sequencing that keeps this script from ever assembling any kind of even accidental momentum to keep the audience invested. What’s clearly obvious is that the screenwriters had an idea in the form of the pool itself, but from there felt like they threw as much at the proverbial creative wall to see what sticks, and between predictably stacking jump scares, a buffet of cliches (Amittyville Horror, most of all) to tie itself to as many as a hundred other films of the genre, and laughably bad creature designs from those within the water, which brought more laughs than shrieks of terror in my auditorium. very little effectively does. Sure, there’s decent atmosphere in the way the camera casually lingers over the water, but that’s all it ever evolves towards, especially since McGuire doesn’t know how to dress up these scenes and sequences in ways that leave you hanging on the edge of your seat, with either prolonged anticipation or red herrings that deviate so sharply from preconceived expectations, and in turn craft some kind of suspenseful payoff that gets us to the next set piece. Even tonally, the film makes the monumental mistake of keeping things entirely serious for the proceedings, which makes even less sense when dealing with wooden dialogue and secondary supporting characters who feel like they exist in an entirely different film all together. If the script attempted to be campy, with elements of self-awareness to its own internal conflict, then it could’ve sprung some personality for a film that is so viciously void of it, but because the interactions are consistently hammering home as much backstory to drive along the storytelling, it’s never able to slow down and just let the insanity of the situation permeate towards its consciousness, instead being just another by the number January paranormal horror flick with little in the way of interesting to allow it to stand out. The script is so creatively vapid and shallow that it can’t even garner anything intriguing in the elements of the lore of the pool itself, which gets revealed during the third act exposition dump that we all expect from a character seeking out a computer or a past victim, both of which this movie obviously has. Suspending disbelief is one thing, but if it comes at a cost of explaining too much too swiftly, then I would rather it leave those supernatural elements undefined, rather than poorly defined, especially since there’s so much interesting that you could do with a pool that kills people, but the script never capitalizes with the kind of long-term commitment that brings it along naturally, leaving it a suspect to a one-off scene of exposition dump that doesn’t stand out from the rest of the script plagued by similar elements. The pool itself isn’t utilized in any kind of way that illustrates its terror, with an undesired PG-13 rating that influences the movie’s imagery, as well as an overall lack of influence from the finished proceedings, which resulted in two people losing their lives over a movie that has anywhere between forty to fifty people in its confines. Speaking of that photo finish, the climax, resolution and overall ending are about as disappointing as you would expect, with overwhelming elements of convenience that spring from thin air as the film doesn’t have time to properly explain it. This rushed consistency ties over to even the final shot of the movie, where a plan so asinine and unrealistic from the characters leads to an abrupt credits scroll that only emphasizes the remarkable waste of time that you just spent with it, in turn granting no kind of satisfaction to both the entertainment value or redemption of the characters, which inevitably lead to one of those groan-inducing credits scroll.

OVERALL
“Night Swim” sinks under shallow waters of disappointment, with ineffective horror and an improper tonal capacity that wastes away the thrills and fun of a plot as ridiculous as a supernatural pool that wants to kill people. Though Russell and Condon commit their all to meaningful characters with ample development, the film surrounding them drowns with the weight of overwhelming boredom and underwhelming lore, leaving this a superficial splash that hits bottom early, then never finds its way back to the surface.

My Grade: 3/10 or F+