Night Swim - Movie Review

Critics Score - 4 of 10

General Audience Score - 6 of 10

When a movie begins and the production company logos begin to pop up on the screen, there are a few that immediately jump out at you. Not only in terms of the stylization of the sequence they put together for it, but the expectations that come with their typical productions. Blumhouse or BH for short, has a creepy and pretty extended introduction and can usually be counted on for producing some upper tier thriller and horror films each year. Granted, there are a few stinkers mixed in there with the great ones. To start the year, Blumhouse drops the new film Night Swim into theatres during the cold and bleak moviegoing month of January, and it’s not a huge mystery why. Unlike some other recent horror films like Thanksgiving and even Talk To Me from last year, which fully embrace the fun side of the horror genre as they go about delivering their scares and still skew towards the serious, Night Swim is all business. Check your fun at the door. Swim does achieve a moderate amount of success creating a creepy atmosphere with its premise and it pulls off a couple jump scares. Meanwhile the terrific Oscar nominated actress Kerry Condon is working double time to sell us on the drama of it all. But in the end when you boil it down, water pun not intended, there’s really no reason that a film about a haunted pool shouldn’t be fun. In the words of Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight, “Why so serious?”. With so much room for this film to inject some humor, creativity and character into it’s story, the fact that it leaves you with such a bland, flatlined narrative is the main reason this Night Swim just can’t manage to stay afloat.

SYNOPSIS - The film opens with a shot of the rear of a two story suburban home at night, the onscreen text informing us that this is the summer of 1992. As the shot lingers, we begin to see water ripples run across the shot, what we’re seeing is a reflection and as the shot begins to rotate around and pans up, the pool lights flicker on to give us a view of the home illuminating it in a creepy iridescent blue hue. Mysteriously, a small red boat surfaces in the middle of the pool and the battery powered toy begins running and doing laps around the deep end, the noise of the little motor filling the backyard. We move to the upstairs of the home where a little girl is sleeping soundly in her bed, her eyes open and she walks to the window where she sees the little toy cruising around in circles, beckoning to her to come retrieve it. After slipping on the fluffiest bunny slippers ever, she walks down the hall to a room with a hospital style bed in it with monitors set up, her sleeping brother lies in it, obviously very sick. “Tommy, are you awake?”, she whispers. “I saw your missing boat outside. Gonna get it for you”, she continues telling the unmoving boy on the bed. She makes her way outside, down by the edge of the pool, the blue lights sending reflections across her face, but finds the boat has sunk to the bottom. After extending the pole on a pool skimming net and letting it down in the water, she slowly starts to move the boat closer towards the edge. As she continues reaching out, we watch as her fluffy bunny slippers edge inch by inch up to and over the threshold of the concrete pool edge. I’m guessing you could make a pretty safe bet as to what happens next. Without getting into the spoilers of this sequence, suffice it to say the bunny slippers aren’t waterproof.

After the film’s title comes onscreen, we watch as rain droplets pelter down on a windshield, the wipers pushing them off the car. Sitting in the passenger side of this vehicle that’s sitting in the rain is former baseball player Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) as he looks out at his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) standing under an umbrella, she motions for him to come. As she does the sides of the screen go blurry and we hear a high pitched piercing noise, he squints his eyes closed as he tries to focus. The screen stays blurry as his son Elliot (Gavin Warren) in a blue rain poncho yells, “Dad, you ok?”. He responds, “Yeah”, but we continue to understand he’s dealing with some kind of head injury as we watch him retrieve a red metal cane out of the backseat. Ray joins his family inside, they’re walking a home that they’re looking at buying. The family walks the home but the price is steep, so they continue to look and the following day, after driving by a more moderately priced home, they arrange another walkthrough. As they tour, Eve speaks with the realtor about the home, it is a rental but is moderately priced and as Eve looks out the back window, she sees Ray standing next to an unused, tarp covered, leaf filled pool. Eve comes out to join him and they discuss the pool but as she leaves and heads back inside, he spots something in the water. Setting his red cane down and kneeling down along the side, he reaches out over the water to try and get something. Alas, he takes an impromptu swim and sinks to the bottom while struggling to get free of a tarp he’s gotten wrapped in, but don’t worry folks, it’s way too early for anybody to die. Despite his near death experience, they’ll take it. Soon they’re unpacking, cleaning the pool and getting it set up for use. A pool man is called out who gives them and us some exposition that this is a natural spring pool, it is connected to a spring that exists under this area, in fact, he’s never seen a pool like this before in person. Also, it’s supposed to have some health benefits. Which also means there’s no telling what’s underneath the drain that lies at the bottom of the deep end. Insert scary ghost noises. But let me be serious with you here for just a moment. Once the swimming starts and creepy things start happening, at least during the night swims, I’m forced to ponder after how many times my pool scared the sh!$ out of me that I’d (A) find another house to rent or (B) stick to daytime swims only.

The first thing that I’d mention when dissecting this film and what I can attribute the issues I have with it to, is the direction from Bryce McGuire. The overly dramatic tone he’s striving for here is completely unnecessary given the actual plot of the film and the way he directs the screenplay that he’s adapted just don’t work well within the context of the narrative. Maybe if this film had wanted to be more serious about its scares it could’ve veered further into the horror, gotten it’s hands a little dirty and actually produced some kills and spilt a little blood to loosen up some. Because as far as the horror genre goes, despite going hard after the thrilling aspects, this film plays it completely safe, staying under the umbrella of the PG-13 rating. Don’t expect any gory surprises or intense kills from this one, in reality I can’t imagine anybody truly finding this film excessively or even moderately terrifying. Possibly my nine and eleven year old boys may, who have had virtually no exposure to horror films. Otherwise, this tame piece of scary movie filmmaking is held up from being a complete waste by the efforts of its cast. Kerry Condon is a formidable force that, as I mentioned, is trying her best to keep this film above water. But the husband played by Wyatt Russell and the child actors playing their kids were also pulling some of the weight, especially the young son played by Gavin Warren, who was particularly good. Without going too hard on the film, as I mentioned, some of the sequences where the film is trying to establish tension or make you jump a little are successful, the special and practical effects utilized as well as the creature design are well constructed. But sadly this swim doesn’t live up to the potential that it could’ve been had it been entrusted to the right hands and unfortunately it more or less flounders around in the water for a little over a hour and a half.

SUMMARY - While general audiences might have a little more fun with this movie than film critics will, it’s a tough film to recommend with the many missteps it makes right from the outset. Horror fans will get a little fix with some creepy sequences that are executed decently, but on the whole, Night Swim just wades around a bit in the shallow end of the horror pool.