Night Swim (2024) Review

 "Marco?!"

-Izzy Waller

The Waller family moves into a new house with a pool after Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) was forced to retire from baseball due to an illness.  Ray quickly discovers that the pool seems to be healing him, but the rest of the family becomes convinced that there is something terribly wrong with the pool.

What Works:

By far the best part of the movie is the visuals and cinematography.  They do a couple of really fun and interesting things.  For example, there is scene where Izzy is playing Marco Polo and when she doesn't get an answer, she opens her eyes slightly.  We get a POV shot from Izzy's perspective, but it looks like we're looking through eyelashes out at the pool.  It's a really cool and creative shot that makes the scene creepier because we don't get a clear view of what's in the pool, but we can see something.  

Later on, the 3rd act of the movie gets pretty surreal as characters swim into the deep beyond the swimming pool.  It looks pretty cool and I like how they made the pool look so far away.  I wish they had done more with it, but I really liked the visuals.

Finally, the family dynamic is the crux of a story like this and I thought it was at least setup well.  A baseball player whose career was cut short due to an illness and his inability to let got of the past, which causes his family to suffer.  The first act does a good job of setting up this family conflict.  It's the rest of the film that fails to deliver.

What Sucks:

In horror movies that surround a family unit, we need to be invested in the family itself.  Either they unite and work together to combat the evil or they are fractured and divided.  The horror should just exacerbate the issues that were already there.  The Shining is probably the best example of this.  All of the issues with this family were nicely set up at the beginning.  Ray can't let go of his past and it causes his relationship with the rest of his family to suffer, except they movie never really explores any of that.  Sure, we get a couple moments where the son, Elliot (Gavin Warren), seems to feel like he'll always be stuck in Ray's shadow, but that's it.  The conflict within the family is barely explored and makes their issues feel very minor.  It's glossed over when it should have been the focus of the movie.  The haunted swimming pool should only exacerbate the situation.

A haunted swimming pool sounds like a dumb idea, but I think you can make any idea work, even if it is silly.  This movie doesn't really do enough with the haunted pool.  It had movements, but they needed to lean into it more and have some fun with the premise.  The movie takes itself very seriously.  Maybe if it had been a little more over-the-top with either gore or scares it would have been more interesting.

That's the big problem overall.  The movie just isn't very interesting.  The family conflict is glossed over and the evil in the pool is mostly vague.  That leads to a dull movie because the conflict isn't engaging.  Nothing is interesting enough to grab the attention of the audience.  I know this was initially a short film and they took the premise and stretched it to feature length.  You can certainly tell that's the case.

Finally, the acting isn't great.  Even Wyatt Russell, who I've seen in other stuff and has always been good, has a really bad line delivery in the 3rd act.

Verdict:

When I saw the trailer for Night Swim, I got pretty excited.  A haunted swimming pool is such a ridiculous idea that it sounded fun.  While the setup is solid and the cinematography and visual elements are great, the movie just isn't interesting.  The writing, conflict, and characters aren't engaging, there is some bad acting, and the movie doesn't do enough with its premise.  Ultimately, this was a missed opportunity to do something fun. 

 3/10: Really Bad