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.
The trailer for “Night Swim” initially intrigued me. It is marketed as a movie about a haunted swimming pool, something I had not encountered before in all my years of watching horror films. Haunted houses? Check. Haunted people? Check. Haunted cars? Check. Haunted swimming pools? Before “Night Swim,” I never saw one but was hopeful that the team behind “The Conjuring” and “Insidious” franchises, as well as the producer of “The Black Phone,” “The Invisible Man,” and the new “Halloween” series, would scare the bejesus out of me. Sadly, it was not meant to be, as “Night Swim” fails to deliver any chills or scares whatsoever.
The film focuses on the Waller family — Ray and Eve (Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon) and their children Izzy and Elliot (Amélie Hoeferle and Gavin Warren). After moving into a house with a swimming pool in the backyard, the family begins to experience strange goings-on. Ray, who used to play baseball, had to retire because of the onset of Multiple Sclerosis, but his condition starts to improve the more he swims in the pool. As he rebounds, unseen forces attack Izzy and Elliot separately in the pool. Eve does some research and discovers there is a long history of disappearances in the house and that the water that now supports the pool was once part of a healing spring, but for one to utilize its healing powers, somebody else in the family must be sacrificed. Now, she must try to save her family before it’s too late.
The premise for “Night Swim” is based on director Bryce McGuire’s low-budget five-minute 2014 short movie of the same name. While I haven’t seen that version, it’s safe to say that this particular story is better suited as a short than a feature-length film; it just doesn’t have the gravitas to keep the audience’s attention. While Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, and Gavin Warren do their best in their respective roles, Wyatt Russell appears to suffer the most. While his character is the central protagonist, he is unemotional and, to be perfectly honest, straight-up boring. Even when his family is in danger, he carries on, almost oblivious to their plight, and seems to care more about his once-illustrious baseball career than their well-being, so when things begin to look bleak for him at the end, I found myself failing to care for him. Not exactly what the filmmakers intended I’m sure.
“Night Swim” offers a few jump-scares and the occasional moment of trepidation, but they quickly capsize, along with the rest of the film. I liked Wyatt Russell as Captain America in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and this year’s “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” so he is more than capable of holding his own onscreen; in “Night Swim,” however, he just seemed totally disinterested, like he’d rather be somewhere else. Believe me, I felt exactly the same while watching it.
Nw available on Blu-ray™, DVD, and Digital
