Night Swim Movie Review

Night Swim (2024)

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Written by: Bryce McGuire (screenplay), Bryce McGuire & Rod Blackhurst (screen story), Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire (short film)
Directed by: Bryce McGuire
Starring: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren
Rated: PG-13
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Plot
A family moves into a new home, unaware that a dark secret from the house's past will unleash a malevolent force in the backyard pool.

Verdict
This starts with promise but can't sustain my interest. It's a killer swimming pool which is a fun concept, but it quickly resorts to tired horror movie tropes. It creates serviceable tension to lure you in, but once it has to provide answers the logic and mood are gone. The last third of this movie is just waiting for the credits. You've probably already seen movies like this. There's so much this movie could have done to drive the tension in the second half, but it just doesn't.
Skip it.

Review
My motivation to see this was driven by the main character being a former baseball player. That and Blumhouse horror movies are usually entertaining enough. This does have baseball, but it is not entertaining enough.

Former baseball player Ray (Wyatt Russell) needs a house with a pool for physical therapy as he has a degenerative illness. Enter a house with an evil swimming pool. It's a great concept. This pool seems to have healing properties. It feels like something I've seen before. The arc isn't surprising. Ray is getting better at a surprising rate and he thinks it's the pool. At the same time, everyone else experiences strange occurrences in the pool, terrifying visions. They think it must be a shadow or a mind trick. Certainly a swimming pool couldn't be doing this.

Wyatt Russell plays Ray Waller

What do you do with an evil pool? Pool party! I expected more from the party with the mood this was creating. There's a troubling event, but it's underwhelming.

This teases a lot of what's to come, though I expected the plot to build more with Ray. I wanted to see him trying to test the pool to prove his theory. That would help the logic of this movie and drive tension. It could have taken the approach that he's some kind of addict that needs the pool. This doesn't build that relationship. I don't think the movie knows what to do. This has some pool monster enter Ray as a way to connect him to the pool, but his addiction to that healing feeling would have been enough and more believable. While the family is being attacked when in the pool we see former victims of the pool that are now grotesque monsters. This could have done a better job of establishing these figures. I thought they were victims relegated to the pool, but there are occurrences outside of the pool as well. For answers we get a classic information dump from a character that couldn't possibly know so much. It's just so typical. You can go that route, but you've got to keep the pacing brisk and provide intensity. This is a wishing well that grants dreams, but the movie doesn't leverage that.

With the answers we get, that generates more questions. How do people get possessed? Is it first come first serve? This concept works so much better if the pool has a supernatural pull on victims. That's what the first scene set up. The farther into the movie, the more logic is stretched. I want to see Ray become more unhinged. If we see him cut his hand and then drown the family pet in the pool to see if his hand heals, all of a sudden he's unpredictable. Everyone else is in danger. That's just one possibility that we don't get.

I lost interest quickly in the last third. This movie doesn't know what to do and just uses all the common horror movie tropes. It could have leveraged the victims relegated to the pool to communicate to the children, to impersonate people they know as a way to draw them in. There's so much this could have done, but doesn't.