Night Swim review: The water’s not fine
First-time director Bryce McGuire's creepy tale of a family's haunted pool surpasses expectations
Film Reviews Night Swim
The double-edged sword of horror films like Night Swim is that the audience has a version of the film in their head even before the projector lights up and the movie starts. If you’ve seen a trailer for Night Swim, you have a very clear idea of what this movie is, and that means two things for first-time director Bryce McGuire. First, it means that there are clear expectations for the kind of film he’s expected to make, and clear rhythms he’s expected to play with. Second, it means that if he’s clever and gutsy enough, he can manipulate those expectations and rhythms to great effect, playing with his audience in ways both creepy and amusing.
The good news is that McGuire has found a way to surpass audience expectations within the framework of his horror hook: A haunted swimming pool that preys on a family. No matter what you think you know about Night Swim going in, McGuire manages to manipulate your preconceived notions and have a little fun with them. That makes for an engaging watch, even when the film is bogged down by the pressures and patterns of its chosen horror formula.
It’s also helpful that McGuire has an engaging and endearing cast to carry his narrative forward. It all begins with Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) campaigning to move his family into a new home with a dilapidated swimming pool out back, hoping that a little water therapy will be the thing he needs to get back on the baseball diamond after a period of illness. His wife Eve (Kerry Condon) is a little hesitant, but before long the entire Waller family, including teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and awkward youngest child Elliot (Gavin Warren) are diving headlong into their new backyard water park. The pool works wonders for the family’s energy, and Ray seems to actually be getting better thanks to his daily swims. But as we all know, something is up with this particular pool, something that seems to come out at night, when the underwater lights flicker and strange shapes, sounds, and forces start to plague the Waller family.
The first task of any horror film working from this kind of premise is making the idea of a haunted pool in an ordinary single-family backyard into a genuinely terrifying prospect. McGuire rises to the challenge, expanding the fright factor from his original short film into something worthy of feature-length exploration. The early pool hauntings are satisfyingly eerie, solidly paced exercises in winding up and then releasing tension, while the script, also by McGuire, uses these moments to pepper in just enough detail to build out a real sense of lore for the film. By the time we get into what’s really going on, and what the Waller family is facing, the audience is thoroughly rattled by that water-filled rectangle in the backyard.
But McGuire is after more than just a disturbing dip into spooky waters. Night Swim is, for all its clever conceptualizing, also a genuinely ambitious character drama, centered largely on Ray Waller’s efforts to simultaneously be a good father and keep pursuing his own personal dream of baseball glory. Ray’s determination, the dark forces at work in the family, and how his family responds all make for an engrossing stew of emotions, particularly when the film makes space for the always-magnetic Condon to do some of Night Swim’s heaviest lifting. When the film is simply playing with the creepy pool sequences, or when it’s letting the Waller family’s struggles take center stage, it works quite well.
But as Night Swim rounds third and makes the turn for home, it starts to struggle to keep its head above the water. The creepy moments are still there, and the film’s surprisingly adept wit keeps peppering in laughs amid the scares, but everything also starts to feel rushed. The Waller family has barely scratched the surface of what’s really going on before they’re thrust deep into a final conflict to settle the issue once and for all (at least, that is, until a sequel comes bubbling up). There’s an abruptness that compresses and flattens out everything, from the horror of a pool that seems to bubble up and fill every space in the family’s life to the deeply human struggles of parents just trying to get through another crisis. It’s enough to wring a lot of the emotional heft out of what could have been a truly affecting conclusion, and it’s disappointing to see the film lose steam so quickly.
But even this last-minute lag can’t keep Night Swim down. Despite some choppy waters in the back half, this is a fun, funny, often genuinely unnerving horror movie experience, one that might make you think twice about that first swim of the year when summer rolls around.
Night Swim opens in theaters January 5
47 Comments
Oh HECK no! Nope nope nope nope nope
that was last year
Every single thing that Wyatt Russel is in makes me angry that Lodge 49 was cancelled.
And why is he always dealing with pools?
He just likes pools, man.
guess we shouldn’t kink shame.
I will never let go of hope that they’ll do a return ala Twin Peaks, at some point. This show was too good to cancel. And the way they ended…my god. Same for the OA. And same for Archive 81, coincidentally, considering the numbers in the title.
I’ve been to the movies a lot over the last month or two and I’ve been bombarded with the Night Swim trailer every time. Interesting to see a rather positive review, it looked really dumb to me from the trailer and just the concept (a haunted POOL!). Kerry Condon comes off a fantastic Oscar-nominated performance in Banshees of Inisherin and all she’s given is this thing??
James Wan is becoming a figure I’ll just trust without much other info going in, everything I’ve seen from him, directing or producing, has been at least a fun time at the movies, if not an absolute blast.
Really? As a director 100%, but he gets producer credits on a lot of garbage because he’s the producer behind every SAW spinoff and Conjuring spinoff, and a LOT of those are garbage. Some fun garbage, but some actual garbage. Conjuring especially because I feel like the series just doesn’t know what to do other than have directors be kind of pale imitators of his style. I know producing is a very nebulous term that can mean any level of involvement, so it isn’t like I think his name as producer on that crap is too much of a knock against him.
I hated Insidious when I first saw it, but after a few viewings, I grew to love it. I’ve loved Wan’s work every since.
This is the film that changed my mind about that. Malignant this isn’t. I think there’s one off screen death the entire film?
I thought it looked creepy and the involvement of James Wan has me intrigued, but I also think the premise sounds silly. This is among the more positive reviews; others I’ve seen are more middling to negative.
Saw this last night and all I can say is…I want to get my hands on Matthew Jackson’s drug stash. A “B” grade is…grounds for expulsion in this case. There is no “stagnant pool” joke too lazy for this soggy mess of a film. The kids are pretty good but Wyatt Russell’s performance is all wet, and the premise, such as it is, is deeply moronic. It completely fails to capitalize on people’s natural fear of drowning or aquatic beasties; the special effects resemble underwater fart bubbles; despite the trailers, exactly ZERO teens are killed; and even by PG-13 standards, the “scares” are sorely lacking. Everyone involved peed in this pool, so remain on dry land.
Just be sure you don’t end up with Micheal Jackson’s.
The premise barely held a 90 minute film
Sequel Time!Night Swim 2: The Deep EndNight Swim 3: Sharks and MinnowsNight Swim 4: Night Swim Goes HawaiianNight Swim 5: There’s a bee in the poolNight Swim 6: Someone pooped!
Game of Pools: A Ballad of Eels & . . . um . . . Sand Dollars
Wait you forgot to go to space.
Under water….no one can here you scream….
Aw, is this not a sequel to Swimfan?
Not my thing, but you know different strokes and all…
is that a swimming joke?
This was legitimately one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in theaters. It feels like someone took every PG-13 ghost movie, fed it to an A.I model and had it write/shit out the script. There’s nothing interesting about it, save for some excellent cinematography (though, now realizing it’s the same DP as Smile makes sense, because there’s a lot of roll shots similar to that film) and why anyone signed on for this. I can’t imagine the budget was large enough to consider it a “paycheck” movie.
This looks shockingly good for a premise one-step removed from Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
LOL who paid for this review? It’s getting massacred on Rotten Tomatoes.
solution: drain and dynamite the pool! demolish the house and ban the property from being redeveloped.
“You remembered to replace that working title with something better before you submitted the script to the studio, right?’“Uh … yeah.”
Isn’t being afraid of a swimming pool like being afraid of sharks? Like, it might be scary but it’s also pretty easy to never come into contact with one.
That is the exact reason why it’s so goddamn funny that there’s a demon girl in this pool. It’s deliberately slapping a demon girl on something everyday mundane. Absolute genius.
I actually thought the exact same thing. I don’t watch horror movies anymore because, while I love them, I’m easily terrified and would stay terrified for months after. But as soon as the scary thing is contained it loses the entire affect for me. Like the first half of The Ruins (the book) scared the living shit out of me—I almost threw the book away because it terrified me to have in my house. But once it was revealed what the scary thing was (not spoiling here), I was able to finish the book with no problem. Your pool is haunted? Ah, that sucks, but I just won’t get in that pool.
The Ruins was a major, major disappointment.
Idk, it was good for me because I was able to read it without freaking out, and I have to give credit to the author because he is really talented at building tension. Even in the beginning when they’re just hanging out on the beach I was feeling it. So I’ll give him props for that. It was an interesting “monster,” but it was disappointing in that it wasn’t ever explained. That’s a little lazy, I think, to just be like “haha this thing exists” without having put any thought into how it came to be.But as a character study in how these people dealt with it, it was good. On the whole it could have been better rounded off.
I finally saw it last night, it’s not really the same as sharks, the pool calls out to people, and makes them hallucinate to get them into the pool. Sure, it’s a silly premise, but I knowingly went to a movie about a haunted pool, so no fair dinging it for that. It wasn’t great, but was a decent time waster on a cold night.
Ahh shit, just as I was finally getting over my JAWS anxiety, now it’s not even safe to go back into a pool.
LOL this movie is the typical James Wan/Blumhouse jump scare garbage that they are known for. Total schlock.
I’m really excited to see this (grew up with a pool – hilaaaarious trailer) so when I saw the title of this review “Night Swim review: The water’s not fine” I audibly was like “aw that’s too bad!” And then I realized this is a good review….. what the hell AV Club.
“The water’s not fine” makes this sound like a negative review…
I had a pool growing up. Demon girl hair caught in the filter? I raced to show my parents the trailer and we had a MASSIVE laugh. As a kid I totally remember being scared of the pool and the unknowns of it at times. I remember a nightmare I had where the pool was brimming with ocean dwelling animals like sharks and octopus. To anyone skeptical of this, there is absolutely an audience for it and I’m racing out to see it this weekend.
People in the comments seem to be missing the absolute brilliance of the concept of this film: yes pools can be scary but NOT because a dead demon girl is in there. It’s so ridiculously funny and they play it totally straight in the trailers. That shot of the dead girl standing over the pool at night had me in stitches dude. This is pure popcorn I’m so there.
Why are people still hiring this Wyatt Russell asshat?Hes fucking awful.
extremely funny that i haven’t seen a trailer for this yet, but i need to watch it to understand the review.
“But as Night Swim rounds third and makes the turn for home, it starts to struggle to keep its head above the water.”Sincere advice from one (old) professional writer to another: it’s best to keep it to one metaphor per sentence.
Deathpool: The Pool That Deaths
I was severely disappointed by this film. There’s literally no deaths. It’s all build.
(spoiler)even at the end when Wyatt Russell’s character sacrifices himself I was like “wait so the message for disabled people is to just give up and not adopt a new lifestyle?” Seriously I’m shocked by this glowing review after seeing this dreck.
The best part was the shot of Wyatt Russell being like “we’re the pool family!”