NIGHT SWIM (2024)

Even though I am quite regularly critical of both Blumhouse Pictures and James Wan, I still like to give their new products a go. Just like Marvel and DC and Star Wars movies, I know the product is going to be generic claptrap with little imagination involved, but I’m still prepared and wait in hope that either of them might actually make something that is actual horror, and not just nonsensical pablum based in some kind of weird and archaic fear of the occult.

I mean come on people, are you REALLY afraid of The Conjuring and Insidious films?!?

Anyway, this film is the directorial debut of Bryce McGuire who based this on a short film he made 10 years earlier with his writing partner, Rod Blackhurst. Ill give one thing to McGuire, from the extras on this disc he is an enthusiastic filmmaker and hopefully will be given another chance in the future to actually make something good.

Oh, did I just bury the lead?

Night Swim tells the tale of Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell), a former pro-baseball player who has had to retire from playing due to an illness. He and his wife, Eve (Kerry Condon), and children Izzy (Amelie Hoeferie) and Elliot (Gavin Warren) are house hunting and find a place that is a little rundown but has a pool that is potentially a great option for Ray as hydrotherapy could really help him out…

… and help him out it does! Over a very short period, Ray seems to be improving rapidly, even down to a deep cut on his hand miraculously disappearing after the family cat goes missing… coincidence? Maybe…

As Ray gets better though, his behaviour starts to change and the rest of the family all have strange occurrences with the pool happen to them individually which makes them all start to fear the back yard entertainment area.

At a pool party, the real estate agent tells Eve that she found out that in 1992 and young girl drowned in the pool, and after some research, she discovers a series of events that put the pool in a dark light… and after meeting the parent of the drowning victim, she decides she needs to get the family out asap before something bad happens to them…

This is an interesting film insomuch as whilst watching the film all this sounds feasible but when you recount the tale to another person (or in a review) it sounds fucking ridiculous. There’s been some pretty obtuse ideas of haunted items and while this isn’t necessarily haunted per se, it does have a freaky backstory that doesn’t sound slightly feasible outside the confines of its universe.

I guess thats what most films are like but this seemed really more apparent than a lot of other horror films.

The performances of the cast was mostly fine, with Condon and Russell really being the foundations of the whole thing, though there were a few characters that didn’t really hold up in the greater scheme of things as they almost seemed like parody, especially the mother of the drowned girl who came across more like a joke version of a j-horror character from a Scary Movie film.

I do have to give the director some credit for the underwater scenes which were mostly shot very well and really had a decent selection of scares to them. Some really nice combinations of knowing something is there and then it disappearing to a clever effect. Actually for the most part the entire film was shot really well.

One other thing, and this is me being a bit picky, but I built pools for a few years and my step-dad owned a pool company for about 25 years and in all that time I had never heard of the type of pool that they talk about in this film; this freshwater pool. Sure it’s a piece of fiction but it just stuck out as weird for me. If anyone had heard of pools with this design and filtration, I’d be happy to hear about it.

I do have to say that i found it interesting that the local school was named ‘Harold Holt’ – not a name you would expect in an American film, especially one to have a school in his name, but certainly a name you would expect to find in a story about drowning.

This is one of those films that are a good idea stretched into an overlong space. I feel that scenes of ‘killer pools’ in things like Burnt Offerings or even Poltergeist’s corpse filled hole are really effective but I’m not sure it translates to a full feature.

Disc: The are a bunch of extras on this disc:

Masters of Fear sees members of the cast and crew suckling from the teat of James Wan and Jason Blum. It is full of the usual ‘foundations of modern horror’ crap that these sorts of ego rubs are full of when in actual fact these blockbuster horrors are no different from the stuff Disney is producing: safe and digestible horror movies.

Demon from the Depths looks at the costumes of the things that ‘live’ in the pool, which are pretty amazing.

Into The Deep explores filming in a water environment.

Marco Polo looked at the ‘Marco Polo’ scene and how the filmmakers idea was to ‘spoil’ the household swimming pool just like Jaws spoilt the beach.

There is also a very enthusiastic commentary by the director which is a fascinating insight into his methods of direction.

This film was purchased from JB Hi-Fi.