A haunted swimming pool terrorizes a family in search of healing in the dull-as-dishwater supernatural horror, Night Swim. Opening with the mysterious disappearance of a young girl who makes the mistake of attempting to recover her ailing brother’s favorite toy from the family swimming pool, Night Swim takes viewers on a slow dive to inanity in what feels like a big belly flop of a film.
Ray and Eve Waller (Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon) are parents in recovery mode. Ray is a former pro baseball player whose career has suddenly halted due to grave health issues, and Eve is a schoolteacher who takes a job in suburban Minnesota to pay for health insurance and get her son and daughter settled into a routine. The new home they fall in love with has a gorgeous swimming pool, and when Ray’s doctor suggests that aqua-therapy might be perfect for his recovery, it seems as though everything just might work out for the best.
Before too long, Ray’s health starts to improve at a rate that cannot be explained by medical science, but this miracle comes with a steep cost, and before long the family is fighting for their lives when their pool turns into out to be stricken with an ancient blood curse.
First of all, this is an A-plus premise for a goofy splatter movie. Give me all of your haunted inanimate objects. Haunted Lawnmower in Blades? Sold. Haunted ‘80s gym in Death Spa? An all-time fave. Haunted swimming pool? Could be a campy hit, but not here.
Based on a short film from directors Bryce McGuire and Rod Blackhurst, this feature length expansion treats its mythos with deadly seriousness. There are allusions to pre-Columbian Earth spirits, a long line of mysterious disappearances going back hundreds of years, and the corruption of the soul that happens when the pool’s subterranean waters take hold of its victims. The problem here is that there are ridiculous situations and dialogue presented in the film with such a deadpan that one cannot help laughing, and it’s never quite clear when that’s intentional and when it isn’t.
As the former ballplayer Ray, Wyatt delivers a very straightforward portrayal of a man who has lost the one thing that makes him special in his eyes. While he doesn’t exactly resent being relegated to house husband and full-time dad, the loss of his superstar status clearly weighs on him in a way that makes him a perfect target for a spirit that feeds on weakness. As he “heals”, his family duties seem to slip from his mind, and the time comes to pay the piper, things get very messy.
Along for the ride with Eve are their children, teenage hotshot Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and her runty little brother Eliot (Gavin Warren). Izzy seems to be settling in well, with a shot at the swim team and a handsome new beau, but Eliot is perpetually in his father’s formidable shadow. He is clearly a head shorter than other his age, and when he goes out for the local baseball team, it becomes clear that he’ll never match his father, making him seem smaller still.
A lot of time is spent observing Izzy and Eliot as they contend with the various concerns of growing up, but along with that, they and Eve begin to experience the pool’s darkening waters. The spirit seems to be rifling through the family members in search of an adequate sacrifice, but Night Swim can never quite decide if this should be silly or serious, and in the end, the muddled tone really lets it down.
The one major bright spot is Wyatt Russell’s final act go-for-broke performance as possession finally takes full control of his mind and body. Channeling The Shining’s Jack Torrance – though perhaps think of the TV version, not the Kubrick one – Ray Waller’s collapse is pretty spectacular in its campy bombast, but it’s too little, too late in a film that has already tonally tanked.
Night Swim has a few decent scares as the pool’s spirit takes various forms to lure and entrap its victims. Unfortunately, it can’t quite manage to maintain tension for more than a couple of minutes at a time. And don’t get me started on its terribly disjointed inner logic, that’s a thread that wouldn’t require more than a slight tug to come completely undone. It’s a mess, and a sporadically good scares cannot save a film that squanders the goodwill endowed by a unique premise by delivering a snoozefest.