‘Night Swim’ is about as scary as a lazy river

Night Swim (2024)

Directed by Bryce McGuire

“Night Swim,” director Bryce McGuire’s anemic new horror offering, is a feature adaptation of his own 2014 short film of the same name. But it reminded me of one of the parody movie trailers that ran before the “Grindhouse” movies (like “Thanksgiving,” “Hobo with a Shotgun,” or “Don’t”). That’s because the plot reads like a joke—a family moves into a house with a haunted pool that also makes people’s lives better? This would have been better if it was a joke.

Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) was a professional baseball player before a devastating MS diagnosis forced him into the dugout forever. When he and his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) decide to finally buy a house after years of moving around the country for his career, they pick one with a pool they think will help with his physical therapy. Their kids (Amélie Hoeferle and Gavin Warren) love the pool, too, but they all quickly begin to see troubling things. Whenever they go underwater, they see figures standing on the edge of the pool…but when they surface, they’re alone. Why don’t they sell the house and move? Well, because swimming is fun and pool parties are good for the kids’ social lives!

“Night Swim” capitalizes on fears almost nobody has…fears of your swimming pool going on forever and strange things trying to pull you underwater. The movie isn’t scary at all. For the first hour, it barely even tries. It’s also bogged down by the inescapable thought that if the family simply moved, the movie would be over. Or even if they just stopped swimming. I hope I’m not spoiling anything when I tell you that the bad stuff only happens in the water (with one or two exceptions). The family’s insistence on staying put and continuing to use the pool after multiple incidents makes it hard for the audience to empathize.

Kerry Condon is a wonderful Irish actress…but she’s kind of a lousy American one. As hard as she tries to stifle her beautiful natural accent, it starts to sneak through (why couldn’t a pro baseball player have just met and married an Irishwoman?). She’s not the worst of the cast, but I don’t like criticizing child actors. Really, nobody in this cast is doing sizzle reel-worthy work. Nobody, that is, except character actress Jodi Long in her one scene. She injected just about the only horror into this whole movie.

I’ll never look at swimming alone in an unlit pool at night the same way again. No, wait, I would have never done that anyway!

1.5/10