Night Swim hurts like jumping off the high jump with a belly flop into a kiddie pool. If you thought I was going to buck the trend on night Swim, and tell you it is the most groundbreaking horror of the year, you haven’t seen Night Swim, or you just woke from a coma since birth, and this was the only movie you’ve ever seen and have no point of reference. Night Swim ultimately fails to deliver any chills or thrills, and instead devolves into a frustrating mess. Whether it is underveloped characters, a half baked plot, or its reliance on obvious jump scares, there’s nothing here that works in Night Swim except the casting director.
The only good thing about this is that it has the presence of Wyatt Russell and Carrie Condon, and the child actors weren’t terrible either. They just aren’t given good material to work with. The movie revolves around a mysterious house with a seemingly possessed or haunted pool, and the new family that moves into it. Of course, the movie couldn’t help but give us this nonsensical opening sequence with characters no one is invested in, and means nothing. But you learn the pool is sinister, and probably eats people.
So when a pro-baseball player (Russell) moves into the home with his wife (Condon) and two kids, he sees the pool as not just great for the kids, but also his rehab. And the home is oddly fitted with a lot of accessibility features, thanks to that opening scene. there’s a realtor that clearly knows more than she’s willing to let on, but instead of ever doing anything interesting with this, they just kind of leave the family to their own devices.
The premise is goofy, and really relies on an an imaginative director who can really bring some spice, or some camp to this absurd concept. There are plenty of bizarre horror movies out there done fairly well, like Teeth, or Rubber, and they know exactly what kind of film they are. When you make a movie about a haunted pool, you’re in the same range that Stephen king found himself with his directorial effort Maximum Overdrive. It’s a silly story, and luckily his direction ended up making that a nice great bad flick. but night Swim is just… bad.
The execution is shallow, often never realizing the full potential, and the characters lack depth to be able to connect with any of them. This is even more true for anyone in the supporting cast, who just seem like a rotating bench of random extras passing through the house. The dialog has nothing to say, and feels like it could have been generated by AI, or just some guy. The teenagers are way too stereotypical, and their motivations and storylines are so overused.
Normally, i hate cheap jump scares, like Smile, which is full of just random loud noises and faces popping up for no reason whatsoever. night Swim is so poorly directed that every jump scare was telegraphed so far in advance, that even if you just woke up, you would know a jump scare was coming. They’re actually cheap “cheap jump scares”, with no real attempt at scaring anything. There’s this scene, where a character just starts excreting this black fluid that is so out of place and bizarre.
When you finally get to the big twist, the antagonist, and past that, you just kinda wonder why the pool wasn’t just filled in after the first opening scene. Night Swim 2 scares me more than likely any film will this year, like anyone would think the world wants more of this. Now here’s where I would normally tell you about the audio description, but thankfully this film didn’t get any of my real money, as I waited for Peacock. Peacock doesn’t like credits, so I don’t know who made this. All I can say, is it’s tragic to work on a film like this, and to have your work be on a film that the world seemingly is universally rejecting. While the audio description on night Swim did a good job of trying to keep this film as scary as humanly possible, it just isn’t. I could follow the film, but I think a five year old could follow the film for the most part. It just isn’t a smart or challenging film, so Night Swim has thankless audio description. It’s almost like someone donated their time or something.
Sometimes, when a movie is in the middle, I accept the fact that everything is subjective and you might just like this film. However, a 4.7 on iMDB, and a 43 on Metacritic, a 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 1.8/5 on Letterboxed, and a Cinemascore had it at a C, and PostTrack had it at 26% recommend, I really just think this is probably not your thing. I hope it’s not. i just want so much more for you as a person. A person I’ve never met.
However, if you want to se this, and need a reason, the audio description is fine, and Wyatt Russell and Carrie Condon do Ok with roles that mean nothing ad have nothing to say.
Final Grade: D (for Drowning)
