Night Swim is a 2024 horror film co-produced by both Blumhouse and Atomic Monster and is written and directed by Bryce McGuire in his debut feature, adapting a short film of his of the same name. This is mine, as well as many others, first film of January, a month notorious for being the dumping grounds for studios to release their films they don’t feel like putting any advertising behind. And I get it, it’s the month after the holidays. Everyone is trying to save money and recover from Christmas, so the average moviegoer most likely isn’t rushing out to the theaters right now. But for better or for worse, I am not the average moviegoer, so I went and saw Night Swim to see if it could break the curse of underwhelming January horror films.

Night Swim follows a family moving into a new house with a swimming pool. It seems to be love at first sight; perfect for the kids in the summer and will allow the injured baseball player husband to recover and get back in the game. Yet all is not as it seems, as the family starts to notice strange occurrences involving the pool, eventually unearthing a dark history that threatens to destroy the family.

Water, and by extension pools, are kind of inherently scary. Things can go wrong in an instant and you could find yourself drowning at the bottom. This certainly isn’t the first instance of a pool being used as a key player in horror. Are You Afraid of the Dark had The Tale of the Dead Man’s Float episode, which I personally think is one of their best episodes; 12 Feet Deep took place almost completely inside a pool; and plenty of horror films have great pool scenes like Let the Right One In and It Follows. Night Swim certainly has some interesting uses of the setting. The underwater scenes are often shot in a disorientating way, reflecting how easy it can be to lose your wits while underwater. This is especially expanded upon in the climax, where the pool begins to feel larger and more inescapable. The pool also has this Lazerus-type deal to it where it can heal and strengthen you, but at a price. Honestly, this sounds like a decent modernization of a classic concept. If I would have known this when I sat down for this film, I would have actually been excited at all the potential it could-ah shit, forgot who this was produced by.

Yeah, this turned about to be more or less a standard Blumhouse affair; taking a somewhat interesting idea and drowning it with cheap cliches and underwhelming scares. The script is laughably bad but plays everything so straight and serious, which if you’re gonna center your whole film around an evil pool, it might help to have a little self-awareness. The biggest belly flop of this film is that it simply isn’t scary, lacking effective tension or terrifying imagery, which could also be chocked up to its PG-13 rating. Not to mention it squanders the talents of actually decent actors.

Kerry Condon…what are you doing here? Is this what happens when you’re robbed an Oscar; you have to start doing movies like this? Truthfully she’s probably the best performance here as wife and mother Eve, doing her best to act scared while talking about a haunted pool. Wyatt Russel on the other hand, who plays husband and dad Ray, is honestly pretty bad here. I can’t put that on him fully though, as the script really does make it hard to take him seriously, whether it be through more heartfelt moments or trying to make Marco Polo scary. Russel has quite a few ridiculous moments here that did get a chuckle out of me, though probably not in a way the film is trying to do. The child actors are actually okay here, but again, the writing is either feeding them terrible lines or forcing them into horror movie cliches in order to move the plot forward. 

The film sloppily tries to balance the horror with the family drama, and ends up underdelivering on both. I saw a lot of similarities between this and The Amityville Horror, where a family is slowly tortured by seemingly unseen forces in their new home. Yet everyone here feels so checked out emotionally to what is happening, not really selling the terror of their experiences. If they looked barely fazed by what was happening, why should I be fazed? There’s little glimpses of something deeper here when the film talks about sacrificing for your family or childhood self-esteem, but none of these ideas are ever expanded upon in a meaningful way that ties into the story. For example, there’s an incredibly minor subplot where the son Elliot feels as if his dad is putting more attention towards another kid on his baseball team. Does this go anywhere or lead to any kind of significant character moment? No. It just comes and goes. Because the drama is so weak, it makes everything in-between the horror so boring to sift through, but honestly the scares aren’t much better.

The “horror” of the film comes from two, constantly repeated steps. A figure suddenly appears in the frame; loud noise plays. Rinse and repeat. The scares are incredibly predictable and cliche, doing little to surprise or subvert. I wonder what’s going to happen when the kid follows a voice coming from the pool filter-ahhhh I pissed my pants. I get with it being PG-13 you can’t get all that gruesome with the violence, but there’s certainly more ways to disturb outside of it. Maybe they could have played with the haziness of being underwater more, or maybe just refrain from capping every scary thing that you see with an obnoxious jump scare sound effect. Even the creature designs aren’t all that scary, ranging from ghosts wearing dollar store vampire makeup, a bloated guy you see for maybe 2 seconds, and LITERALLY the monster from that Are You Afraid of the Dark episode. C’MON!

Other than those previously mentioned underwater scenes, I didn’t really feel like the cinematography was anything all that special. It definitely felt like it was shot for coverage rather than attempting to be visually interesting, which could have helped the presentation of the horror. There’s some shots here that genuinely felt like a back-to-school commercial, complete with a happy family jumping into a pool in slow motion. Sometimes underwhelming films can be elevated with their approach to visuals, but this just isn’t the case here.

Night Swim shows droplets of promise with its premise, but unfortunately it can’t muster up enough creativity to turn it into anything worthwhile. The actors are fed embarrassing lines and story beats that severely underutilizes their talents, while the story itself can’t find ways to scare you outside of the most obvious jump scares that can be found literally everywhere else. This slice of summertime horror feels incredibly misplaced in January, with the film’s only saving grace being that it’s relatively short and was made for next to nothing, so it’s already made its money back in the first weekend. Again, I appreciate Blumhouse giving opportunities to first-time directors, but can we start making movies that aren’t just easy cash grabs that require minimal effort? Just skip this one. You’ll find more enjoyment jumping headfirst into the shallow end.

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