Everybody out of the pool!
Watching “Night Swim” was a humbling experience. As a horror movie fan and a self-proclaimed lover of good trash, I pride myself on having a suspension of disbelief the size of Jupiter. After all, I’ve enjoyed movies about twerking androids, little girls sucked into television sets, and a possessed infant strong enough to decapitate Donald Pleasence with a shovel.
It’s safe to say I’ll buy almost anything. “A movie about a killer swimming pool?” asked the cocky voice inside my head. “I got this!”
As Proverbs 16:18 tells us: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Destruction is exactly what happened to the 98 minutes I spent watching the worst movie I’ve seen in years. But doing what you love takes sacrifice; coincidentally, sacrifice is one of the themes of “Night Swim.”
Several times, we are informed that “love requires sacrifice.” That line is uttered by the old lady who provides the obligatory third-reel explanations of evil, and by Ray Walker (Wyatt Russell), the patriarch of the haunted pool-owning family. During a walkthrough with the real estate agent before they move in, Ray falls into the pool and almost drowns. The Walkers still buy the house.
Writer-director Bryce McGuire courts disaster by basing the plot on a pool. The shark in “Jaws” didn’t just snatch people off the toilet and eat them — they had to go into the water.
The same water-based principle applies here, which is why Ray’s wife, Eve (Kerry Condon, a LONG way from her Oscarnominated role in “The Banshees of Inisherin”), and his two kids, Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and her younger brother, Elliot (Gavin Warren), dip their toes in that corrupted, chlorinefilled vessel of evil.
And each of them has a runin with something that tries to kill them.
Now, it’s completely understandable why Ray keeps on swimming regardless of any murderous mayhem. The water heals the debilitating disease that ended his major-league baseball career, allowing him such super-strength that he rips the cowhide off a baseball when he hits it. He also becomes possessed by the pool, or something to that effect.
What I don’t get is why everyone else keeps getting in the damn pool. Supernatural specters try to drown Eve, Izzy, and Elliot, yet they continue to swim again and again. What’s even more nonsensical is Eve’s response after Elliot is attacked by Rebecca (Ayazhan Dalabayeva), the little pig-tailed girl who drowned in the pre-credits sequence. Eve claims it was one of the neighbor kids playing a prank. Never mind that Rebecca was hiding in the drainage vent of the pool like a low-rent Pennywise the Clown.
No matter! The Walkers invite the entire block to a pool party! Let’s get the neighborhood in so they can all potentially be murdered. These folks must have some primo homeowner’s insurance, let me tell you.
People do stupid stuff in horror movies all the time. They go alone into dark rooms, or creepy basements, or the woods. But they usually only make these mistakes once, as they fall victim to a masked killer, a toothy monster, or the aforementioned possessed infant with a shovel.
“Night Swim” has its characters make infuriatingly asinine decisions to serve its plot. And they live to keep making more bad choices. It’s as aggravating as the film’s pathetic jump scares, its solemn tone, and the explanation of why the pool wants to drown people. (Seriously? A wishing well?!)
By the way, “Night Swim” was based on a short by McGuire that ran four minutes. Not only is this version only watchable for about that long, it rips off better movies and has as much scary material as its characters have common sense.