Blumhouse shocked the world in 2023 when it released a good movie in January, a month that is typically designated exclusively for some of the year’s worst films. M3GAN (2023) opened the floodgates to a decent slew of movies for the remainder of the month, including Missing (2023) and Plane (2023). Blumhouse’s success continued into late 2023 with its release of Five Nights of Freddy’s (2023), a movie that scored low critically but became the company’s highest-grossing horror movie of all time. If Night Swim (2024) is any indication, we may not be so lucky this year.
The first movie released after the merger of production companies Blumhouse and James Wan’s Atomic Monster, Night Swim marks the feature directorial debut of Bryce McGuire. Similar to other modern horror films like Smile (2022) and Lights Out (2016), the film originated as a low-budget short film, which McGuire co-directed with Rod Blackhurst in 2014. What served as a simple proof of concept ten years ago is much more fleshed out here to the point where the concept loses the sense of mystery that made it interesting in the first place.
When major league baseball player Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is forced to retire after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he moves his family into a new house with a beautiful backyard pool that is too good to be true. Not long into their stay, Ray begins to notice his condition improve to the point where he’s nearly able to play baseball again.
Meanwhile, his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) and their two children gradually experience strange incidents whenever they go for a swim in their pool that range from seeing people above ground while swimming underwater who disappear once they surface to hearing the voice of a young girl claiming to be trapped in the pool’s filtration system. Suffice it to say, it quickly becomes clear that there is something very wrong with this pool.
McGuire has been outspoken about his inspirations for Night Swim, like Poltergeist (1982) and Jaws (1975). In fact, there is a pool party scene in this movie that feels almost directly lifted from the iconic beach scene in Jaws, where Eve takes on the part of Martin Brodie (Roy Scheider) nervously surveying the partygoers, making sure no one is in any danger from whatever may be in the water. These references are flattering until you realize that the film doesn’t have anything original to say of its own.
As a suburban horror story, the majority of the first half is quite intriguing. McGuire, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Blackhurst, shows initial interest in trying to keep viewers guessing. He does a decent job setting up intrigue between what may be going on with the pool and why it’s having the effect on Ray that it is. However, once the second act arrives, McGuire feels obligated to include several dull exposition scenes that ruin any tension that the film’s mystery sets up and garner laughter and eye rolls at how paint-by-numbers the explanation is. It’s another instance of Night Swim taking elements from better films and injecting them here to try to coast off of their previous success.
When Night Swim loses its mysterious tension, it loses everything since it isn’t scary to begin with. Some ideas are creepy in concept, but they all fail in execution. You can only see someone get grabbed by something and pulled underwater so many times before you get bored and start wondering why people are still stupid enough to go in this pool, especially when a laughably bad-looking creature is hiding beneath the surface. Viewers only get brief glimpses at this entity here and there, but it looks like a goofier-looking version of the monster from Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954).
Although the family story is more engaging than the mystical nonsense with the pool, everything feels surface-level. Russell and Condon are talented performers who bring some heft to their roles, but McGuire doesn’t give them any substance besides simple desires. All viewers learn about their characters is that Ray wants to play baseball again, and Eve wants Ray to move on and become a family man. There’s never a sense of personal conflict or drama, and when elements of tragedy are shoehorned in at the end of the film, viewers struggle to care because of how ridiculously presented everything has been up to that point.
Nothing about Night Swim feels original or frightening. It’s a cookie-cutter horror story that borrows too many elements from other well-known films. At this point, we’ve seen many success stories of horror shorts that translate well to full-length features. In these other instances, the lore that is added to flesh out the concept is interesting enough to warrant a full feature. Unfortunately, Night Swim would’ve been better if it kept its mystery below water.
Review Courtesy of Evan Miller
Feature Image Credit to Universal Pictures and Blumhouse via The Daily Beast
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