Night Swim

January is notoriously a dump month. There’s a great little explainer over on MovieWeb, but the gist is that even pre-COVID, fewer people go to the movies in January, so the studios tend to release films in which they’re less confident. It’s also become a bit of an interesting spot for horror movies in the wake of the success of Cloverfield in 2008, largely due to the lack of competition combined with their low cost. After beginning last year with M3gan, which I thought was a good idea if not well executed (I know, unpopular opinion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), I figured I’d take a shot at this cheesy looking horror movie about a haunted pool. I mean, it stars Wyatt Russell and the wonderful Kerry Condon. How bad could it be?

Eve (Kerry Condon) is relieved that her husband Ray (Wyatt Russell) is retiring from his pro baseball career. For one, moving each time he was traded was a huge disruption to their kids’ lives. But he could also become a bit obsessive, pushing himself so hard to achieve success that he wasn’t the most present husband or father. Unfortunately, his hand was forced by a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. So they’re delighted when they find a house in the suburbs that has a pool, allowing him to do additional physical therapy at home.

Surprisingly, his disease almost immediately retreats to the point he no longer needs crutches, which starts him dreaming of a return to the MLB. Meanwhile, the rest of the family has some strange experiences in the pool. Always accompanied by the lights slowly flickering on and off, they hear voices, see shapes, or feel something grab them. It’s not long until only Ray is using it. Which means everyone else will be safe…right?

The story is trying to work in some deeper themes of obsession and the importance of sacrificing for your children, condemning the idea that they should be held responsible for your failures or inability to achieve your dreams. In that way, it’s serving a role horror often has (although less so recently) in reinforcing traditional values. Not that it’s an unreasonable message, but it’s just a bit odd to me that something so basic was what the filmmaker really needed to say.

Because this certainly isn’t very scare centric. The terror relies on getting them into the pool, and almost always at night, for no reason other than the dark is scarier. The scares aren’t very effective, which isn’t surprising since the idea of a haunted swimming pool is fundamentally silly. What does connect, though, is the fear of the mundane. It’s a pretty universal experience to be freaked out by something in your home (or surroundings more generally) which poses no actual danger, but your brain spins into something which could harm you. Pools are a pretty solid choice, too, due to the risk of drowning and the anxiety it raises in parents of their children going in unsupervised.

However, the movie fails to really make you feel it. There’s a distinct lack of proper threat throughout much of the film, so the tension it tries to create feels hollow and unsubstantial. It doesn’t help, either, that so many of the issues could have been avoided if the family just talked to each other. It doesn’t even have the excuse of them being shown not being close. They just choose not to say anything, or even to downplay each others’ experiences, despite having had one of their own!

Even if it did make you feel it, there are never really any established rules to the haunting. Things just happen as the plot needs in order to propel itself forward, leading to a bunch of cheap contrivances that undermine the premise of the film. If they build off the established mechanics, then sure, that can make for an interesting evolution of the game. See something like Tremors. But here, there’s only the thinnest ability to trace these changes back to any source. They make some effort, what with a cold open featuring the previous family, and a later scene where Eve talks to that family’s matriarch. However, if anything, that further frustrates any sense of cohesion without really revealing anything.

The performances are all fine. Nothing special, but it’s hard to break out of something as weak as this, which gives its actors little room to do anything. My biggest question, though: why make Kerry Condon speak with an American accent? I mean, she does fine, although her Irish brogue squeaks through on a few occasions. But why couldn’t an Irish woman marry a dude from the American heartland? Especially one who looks like he could have Irish ancestry himself.

I don’t know what Night Swim needed in order to work. I applaud them for trying an idea I haven’t seen or heard of before. The general approach of making the suburbs feel unsafe, despite most people moving there for the security, is always a solid template to start from. But sometimes, there’s a reason a specific idea hasn’t been done before, and this movie is a perfect example of that.