Boy howdy, there is nothing like horror in January to remind you of how bad the genre can get. Night Swim isn’t even a nadir. The film had some decent cinematography and threatening atmosphere. Films can get much worse than this. That said, Night Swim never defined its villain and left us with a very suspect conclusion. It was poorly researched, poorly cast, poorly acted, and poorly written. That the film was neither necessarily poorly shot nor directed is hardly a win. These are the kind of films that deliberately come out before Oscars so they cannot be remembered when you make a yearly “worst of” list.
Luckily, I keep extensive notes. Night Swim may not make my “Worst of 2024” list, but it won’t be for lack of consideration.
Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is a former baseball player undergoing rehab. I hate to give credence to this fantasy plot point because Russell (whose father played in the minors) is the least convincing major league baseballer since Timothy Busfield in Little Big League. When you buy into this, you’re only encouraging people to believe ordinary, untalented athletes can play major league baseball. Despite the game’s long history of celebrating star players who don’t look like athletes (Babe Ruth, Kirby Puckett, Randy Johnson, etc…) this is not true.
So there’s a suburban home with a swimming pool. The pool has a history of death behind it, but none of that came out in the property inspection papers. The Wallers show up to look at the place and one of the parents almost drowns retrieving a ghost toy from a 1990s owner. Naturally, they buy the place. Omens, shmomens.
I don’t exactly know what Ray Waller’s agenda is at this point. He needs the water rehab to help with his “illness,” whatever that is, but I dunno if his objective is to return to a career in baseball. It seems like he’s retired, in which case, what’s your hurry, buddy? Meantime, the pool itself exhibits some weird behavior. When cleaning out the thing to get it home-ready, Ray cuts his hand on the drain, which immediately regurgitates raw sewage.
Ah, but it isn’t sewage, the pool is filled by a “natural spring.” WTF? That’s not a thing, is it? Well, you
can’t put chlorine in it then, can you? Oh, you can. Oh, I see, this is one of those “rules only matter when we care about them” films. Is there a supernatural person living in the drain, like Lady in the Water? I dunno, but somebody is turning off the pool lights and playing “Marco Polo” with the Waller’s daughter.
And that’s pretty much what there is to this film – there is some sort of supernatural force living in the pool. Sometimes it heals; sometimes it kills children. It’s far more active after sundown. I dunno how this is a thing, but don’t swim in the pool alone at night … which should already be an enforceable rule for every suburban homeowner.
The pool spirit can take corporeal form from time to time, I think. It can assume human shadow. I think. It can manipulate objects. I think. It doesn’t show up often enough to determine any of this for sure. The best effect in the film is when the swimming pool suddenly has ocean-like depth to thwart a rescue attempt where it had been just eight to ten feet deep. It’s a nice effect, but still leaves the viewer wondering what the objective is. What is the pool actually trying to do and how is it successful or unsuccessful in that purpose? I can get behind a spooky game of “Marco Polo” and an evil drain genie, but this script needed several more rewrites, especially the ending, to get to a satisfactory horror film. At the end of the day, I could happily Night Swim away from this idiocy and wonder why the owners didn’t just do that as well.
There once was an evil pool
That targeted kids of age: school
Yet it’s nefarious plan
Seemed half-assed, man
A malevolence more guideline than rule
Rated PG-13, 98 Minutes
Director: Bryce McGuire
Writer: Bryce McGuire, Rod Blackhurst
Genre: January horror
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: How desperate are you for a scare?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Professional baseball players
