Based on the acclaimed 2014 short film by Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire, the film stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Oscar nominee Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin), teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle, this fall’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and young son Elliot (Gavin Warren, Fear the Walking Dead).
Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.
What We Thought:
Night Swim should be called Amityville Pool Party because it’s just the latest horror film to seem like a clone of The Amityville Horror franchise. I’ll describe the movie and you tell me if you’ve seen it before, ready? A family buys a home that ends up having a shady past, the good looking dad with a beard starts losing it and has a negative effect on his family. Did you picture James Brolin or even Ryan Reynolds? Then you’ve seen this movie before. Heck I’d even accept Jack Nicholson in The Shining because this has similarities to that too.
The biggest issue with the movie is 85-90% of it doesn’t pan out. The daughter character has a love interest who is Christian. He hands her a Christian swim team paper. He wears a cross and they even make reference to him being a Christian after he kisses her. The audience being told he’s a Christian means something right? Absolutely not. It’s meaningless as is the entire character. Christianity could play a part in a movie about cursed water like it does in The Exorcist, but there’s no payoff to this character.
The daughter wanting to join the swim team because of the cute boy means something to the movie right? She’s going to save someone’s life because she’s a strong swimmer right? Nope. Like the boy being Christian, her being a good swimmer doesn’t pan out either.
The son not being good at baseball despite his dad being a former Major Leaguer means something too right? Eventually the son will discover his talent and fight back right? There is a baseball bat involved, but the son has nothing to do with it.
The movie having the word night in it is meaningless as well. Nighttime doesn’t really make a difference in the film. Things happen at night, but there’s a big event in the middle of the daytime during a pool party the family hosts to meet the locals. It’s afternoon with plenty of sunlight and something bad happens, why is night in the title?
We’ve seen hundreds of possession/cursed movies in the past 50 years since The Exorcist/The Amityville Horror/The Shining that most movies seem more like ripoffs than anything original. Night Swim is just the latest ripoff. The cast does do their best to try to make the movie entertaining, but despite decent enough acting the movie is completely forgettable. It’s the first week of January, I know by the end of 2024 I’ll completely forget this film exists. It’s not scary in the slightest. The crowd did not react to jumpscares or even talk back to the screen that much and that should tell you something. Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon put in an effort for a film that didn’t require it, but they can’t save this one from sinking.
Genre: Horror
Starring: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren
Directed by: Bryce McGuire
Written by: Bryce McGuire,
Based on the short film by Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire
Producers: James Wan, Jason Blum
Executive Producers: Michael Clear, Judson Scott, Ryan Turek
The Nerds Templar 