Night Swim Review: A Generic But Enjoyable Haunted Pool Movie
Consider, if you will, the swimming pool. While there are many flashy, outrageous exceptions based on eccentricity, wealth, and other factors, most swimming pools are of a fairly standard make. If a household backyard swimming pool has any character at all, it's because of what one puts into it: family and friends, memories, activities, and so on.
In this way, a swimming pool is akin to genre filmmaking. That is to say, the structure is fairly generic, the aesthetic is borrowed from bits and pieces of other models, and the entire enterprise seeks to serve a general function. Yet within those parameters, there can be room for variation, enough that the experience can be pleasantly unique.
That's the case with "Night Swim," the latest mid-budget offering from producer Jason Blum and his Blumhouse label. Like the genre and exploitation gurus of days gone by (such as Roger Corman, Charles Band, James Glickenhaus, and others), Blum has made a minor empire out of a mixture of original and IP-driven genre features. In addition to (correctly) banking on horror's ability to get a lot of box-office bang for its buck, Blum also seeks to give opportunities to up-and-coming filmmakers who want to splash around in the genre pool.
"Night Swim" continues that trend, as director and co-writer Bryce McGuire is making his feature-length debut. Seeing as the movie is an expansion of McGuire's four-minute short from 2014 of the same name, "Night Swim" relies a whole lot on genre tropes and classic horror to fill out its runtime. However, it uses that extra room to introduce some surprisingly unique and compelling concepts to the elevator pitch of "haunted pool," allowing the movie to have, like any decent swimming pool, a deep end.
How I spent my Amityville summer vacation
"Night Swim" begins with a cold open set in the early '90s, in which a young girl, after checking on her terminally ill brother, is attempting to save a toy of his left behind in their backyard pool when she's menaced (and abducted — or worse) by some spectral ghouls. Flashing forward some 30-odd years, we're introduced to the Waller family: mother Eve (Kerry Condon), teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle), younger son Elliot (Gavin Warren), and the patriarch, Ray (Wyatt Russell). Due to Ray's major league baseball career, the Wallers have had to move around a lot, with the strain of an absentee husband and father (not to mention Elliot and Izzy having to make new friends over and over) becoming nearly too much to bear. Now that Ray has come down with a degenerative illness and has been forced into retiring from pro ball, the Wallers are in the market to try and finally settle down.
Not so fast, horror protagonists: Ray has yet to come to terms with the encroaching reality that he'll never play ball again, and decides to eschew a living situation that would help his healthcare in favor of a cozy two-story home in the suburbs, complete with swimming pool. Ray accidentally falls in the pool while inspecting it, and has a vision of himself playing baseball at full strength. That clinches it: the Wallers move in, Ray's health magically begins improving, and he becomes convinced that some hydrotherapy is all he needed to get better.
Sure enough, the external perfection of the Waller's summer in their new home soon gives way to deeper, deadlier issues beneath the surface. Not only do the spectral terrors begin to menace the rest of the Waller family and their friends, but Ray's recovery appears to sour, as he begins to exhibit a murderous attitude toward anyone seeking to separate him and his precious pool.
While the idea of a killer swimming pool is nearing a "Death Bed" and "The Lift"-level of intentional camp, McGuire, his co-writer Rod Blackhurst, and his cast play things straight, drawing inspiration primarily from the classics "The Amityville Horror" and "Poltergeist" with their real-estate woes and dangerous suburban environments. McGuire also borrows liberally from the playbook of James Wan (who is not coincidentally a producer on the film), messing with the audience's sense of timing with his peek-a-boo terrors (there's even an ominous game of Marco Polo, recalling the first "The Conjuring" and its clapping game). As such, there's not much new going on here, and even though it all works fine, the first half of the film is too generic to be called inspired.
Night Swim deserves a quiet praise
Don't count "Night Swim" out too quickly, however. For one thing, McGuire has put together an excellent cast: like his famous father, Russell takes to genre material like a duck to water, knowing just which notes to play when and how hard to play them. He's a magnetic actor, and seems to be having a wonderful time when he's allowed to pull the stops out of his performance. Condon, meanwhile, could reasonably be said to be above this material, coming off her Academy Award nomination for "The Banshees of Inisherin." It's precisely for that reason that her presence here is so welcome, as she lends the movie the gravitas it desperately needs to transcend its "average horror movie" status.
For another, Blumhouse is establishing a unique track record for itself by spinning seemingly innocuous, fairy-tale concepts into horror gold (or, if not quite gold, at least silver). "Truth or Dare," "Fantasy Island," and the upcoming "Imaginary" all fit this bill, and so, it turns out, does "Night Swim," remixing a classic idea from fairy tales and childhood and turning it into the stuff of nightmares. This added philosophical/ethical layer to the plot gives the movie a much-needed kick beyond being simply "the evil pool movie," and creates enough goodwill to buy a third act which involves much of the expected horror histrionics.
Ultimately, "Night Swim" is a bit of a contradiction in terms, a mostly generic horror film that impressively adds a few unique elements to the proceedings. It's a shame that McGuire doesn't follow Russell's lead and allow the movie to really go bonkers; perhaps they were intimidated by 2002's "Dark Water" or the "Jack Frost" films, which do more with the idea of "evil water" than is seen here. Still, "Night Swim" delivers the goods enough to be a fun time, and like a day in a backyard pool, it may not be super memorable but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable.
/Film Rating: 6 out of 10