Night Swim

Starring: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren, Ben Sinclair
Director: Bryce McGuire
Based on the short "Night Swim" by Bryce McGuire and Rod Blackhurst
After suffering an injury which prematurely ended his professional baseball career, Ray Waller (Russell) and his wife Eve (Condon) are looking to settle down with their two kids Izzy (Hoeferle) and Elliot (Warren). They find a cozy house with a pool in the back that Ray can use for rehabbing his injury and the kids can use for fun. This fun amenity soon proves to be more than the family bargained for as weird things begin to happen: the kids start seeing things that aren't actually there and Ray becomes obsessed with being in the pool. Concerned for everyone's wellbeing, Eve begins to dig deeper and discovers the true intentions of the creepy entity that lives in their pool.
Sigh. The January doldrums are upon us, bringing with it the expected horror film to kick off the new year. Last year, we were lucky enough to have M3gan, brought to us by Blumhouse and James Wan's Atomic Monster. That film was much better than anyone really expected, mixing camp and some good scares; M3gan was a movie that embraced exactly what it was and was much better because of it. Blumhouse and Atomic Monster hope to start 2024 with a similar success.
It's fortunate that these movies don't cost much to make because the only thing they can really be happy about is that they will make a profit regardless of opening weekend performance. The movie, which is based on a surprisingly effective short that Maguire directed with co-writer Rod Blackhurst back in 2014, fails to do anything interesting with the material. It honestly should have just stayed a short because what worked so well was that it didn't try to provide answers. It just got to exist in all of its four minute glory. Any tension the movie does manage to put together is squandered by trying to explain why its all happening.
Also working heavily against it is that movie is quite silly and unintentionally funny, with talented actors being forced to spout inane dialogue like "The pool needs me!" with a straight face. The Marco Polo scene, which was featured heavily in the trailers, somehow plays worse here as we get our first good look at the entity that lives in the pool. It reminded me of John Leguizamo's Clown from Spawn and that's never a good thing. The movie also steals elements from much better horror movies like It and The Amityville Horror, which is fine, but you shouldn't be begging your audience to notice them as much as this movie does. The ending of the movie is also abrupt, with the family solving everything in a really cheesy way that gets capped by a solution that they probably should have just done in the first place.
It also would have helped if we had been given a reason to care about the family that is being terrorized. Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon are both very talented actors but they don't have a lot of chemistry together and we aren't given enough time to generate any sympathy. The kid actors are fine, but when things happen to them, instead of tension or dread it's met with laughter.
The only reason my final grade isn't lower is the movie did have some unique underwater cinematography and there was a somewhat decent idea introduced during the finale that the movie had no idea what to do with.
Sigh. I can't even make the argument that this would have been better with an R rating because in all honesty nothing really could have helped.
2024 is off to a bad start.
Grade: D-
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