Night Swim review.
A little Pennywise, a little Amityville…a dash of Field of Dreams? Whatever pieces you see in Night Swim…the package ends up all wet.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Night Swim
Directed by Bryan McGuire
Screenplay by Bryan McGuire
Starring Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren, Nancy Lenehan, Jodi Long and Rahnuma Panthaky
Night Swim Review
Close your eyes and picture a movie about an evil swimming pool. Tell me what you see. Do you see bodies sucked through the filter? Blue water turning red? The eternal nightmare of getting one’s fingers caught in a grate? Perhaps you see increasingly convoluted reasons for characters to continue putting on swim trunks. Maybe a monster made up of water. Some cheeky dialog and over the top comedic beats.? A throwback to the sillier side of 80s horror? A 90s-like meta story where the characters make dark quips about the ridiculous nature of their situation before being pulled under the surface? Night Swim doesn’t do any of these things.
You almost want to give it credit. Those are low hanging fruit scenarios. B-movie concepts that “don’t belong” in the prestige horror of the 2020s. You can almost rationalize why Night Swim makes the choices that it makes. Then you remember it’s a movie about a killer swimming pool. It presents a total B-movie idea and tries to make a mainstream movie out of it. Complete with beautiful shots, emotional character payoffs and slow developing plot points. In a movie about a killer swimming pool.
Just thinking about the premise can put a smile on your face. The mind wanders into all those ideas in the opening paragraph. No matter what idea you come up with the common denominator is…fun. Night Swim isn’t fun. Ever. It is so darkly serious that it almost has to be seen to be believed. Most people would look at the premise and assume the result would be a bad movie. I doubt, however, many could predict what would go wrong with it. This isn’t a “so bad it’s good” movie or a cheesy one destined to become a cult classic. Make no mistake…Night Swim is the story of someone managing to make a killer swimming pool concept tedious and boring.
In a vacuum there are positives. The movie has a point to make…it has a story to tell. It also has a fine cast in place to tell it. It’s a well shot picture and a technically solid product. These are things that every movie should strive to have. In a vacuum. When you aren’t making a movie about an evil swimming pool. The lack of fun and wildness tanks any goodwill that can be found in the strong production values. This may sound counterproductive coming from an outlet that strives to find positives in an often-misunderstood genre…but a movie about a killer swimming pool should be a trashy B-movie. The attempt to produce the story for a mainstream audience would be intriguing if it didn’t betray the core of the idea. Night Swim seems to be ashamed of what it is.
That disconnect is felt in every well-framed moment of the story. No joy shines through. No fun to be had. When the third act arrives, it should go for the throat. Instead, it takes a step back to become an investigative horror movie. After an hour spent waiting for the payoff to a lot of setups…we’re supposed to care about why the pool is evil instead of enjoying the evil things it should be doing.
The story is about a family that buys a house with an evil swimming pool. The patriarch Ray (Wyatt Russell) is a baseball star with a debilitating illness. The pool appears to be healing him…but the good comes with a high cost. Russell and the rest of the cast do a good job with the heavy material. The problem is they’re fully committed to the wrong tone. The pool beckons people like Pennywise in the sewer (there’s even a direct homage behind the filter at one point). It eventually possesses Ray like it’s The Amityville Horror. At no point does anyone suggest that the central premise is completely ridiculous. Not on the screen. Not behind the camera. It plays everything painfully straight. Of all the potential ways to make a movie about a killer swimming pool…Night Swim chooses the strangest one. And the most boring.
Scare Value
When you hear the elevator pitch “killer swimming pool” you walk out of the elevator with a certain set of expectations. Night Swim doesn’t deliver any of them. It’s genuinely shocking that this got from pitch to the big screen without anyone suggesting having any fun with the concept whatsoever. What’s here is a well-made, well-acted movie that attempts a heavy story. About a swimming pool. Mind boggling.
2/5
Night Swim Link
In theaters now – Fandango
