One nice thing about living in Florida that isn't going to happen here, is being able to go swimming like nine months out of the year. Here, in the great state of Ohio, you get about three to four. It's a luxury I didn't take advantage of as much as I should have, but maybe I had a good reason. You never know if your pool is haunted, like today's movie...
Night Swim (2024)
I have to say, I like the way Blumhouse does business. They release so many movies with tiny budgets under their umbrella and count on one of them being a hit to bankroll the next round of movies. I imagine aspiring filmmakers go to Jason Blum and he just smiles and hands them 50-money and six months later it's in theaters. Last year they released about one movie a month. But for every one Conjuring, they get about 50 Firestarters. I mean look at their filmography, there are a lot of movies, many with unique and weird premises, but none have a stranger premise than Night Swim.
Like most horror movies, the movie tries to start with a bang. In the 1990s a young girl makes her way to the pool only to be drowned in probably the movie's scariest moment. Fast forward to today and we meet the Waller family. The father, Ray, was a former baseball player who was diagnosed with MS. After the family moved into their new house, Ray started swimming and he suddenly realized the pool was healing him. A deep cut miraculously healed without a scar, and his disease started to disappear. Naturally, he's pleased as punch at this development, and the weird goings on don't seem to bother him because the pool has got its claws in him. From there, it's standard horror movie fare where Ray starts acting more and more unhinged, while the mother tries to get to the bottom of why their pool is haunted.
I mean, it's a movie about a haunted pool, I cannot stress this enough. That is probably the absolute best storyline you can make on the subject and it's still kind of meh. I appreciate the effort, don't get me wrong, I can think of a whole bunch of people who complain about no originality in Hollywood anymore and then they serve us up a haunted pool on a platter. The premise sounds like something you'd see on "Mystery Science Theater 3000," but still you can't say the idea isn't original.
In a movie like this where the obvious way to fight the evil is to just... not go swimming, they have to find ways to pad it out. They do that by making everyone make the worst possible decisions at all times. I've talked about bad decisions in horror movies a lot, but in this movie, until the very end, every single person makes the dumbest decision at every single opportunity. It's not like in Halloween Ends where the bad decisions are infuriating, this one it's more like, "Yeah, I guess they gotta keep the plot going somehow."
The most egregious example is when the daughter, Izzy, is playing "Marco Polo" with a guy she likes. Spooky stuff keeps happening in the middle of the game and suddenly the teen stops responding to her. Despite the noises and scary things going on, she keeps her eyes closed. Like, absolutely no one wouldn't have looked to see what was going on, but she keeps them closed for no other reason than so more spooky things could go on and so the movie could happen.
Did I mention that this is a movie about a haunted pool? Think about that for a second. The fact that it got the green light and turned into a full-length movie is impressive. Despite everything working against it, it's not terrible. The acting is good, I really like Wyatt Russell and hope he starts appearing in more things that aren't MCU-related so I have a reason to watch him. Some of the spooky stuff is effective and I like how the camera plays around with perspectives by going under and above the water. The movie managed to unnerve me multiple times and some of the jump scares were pretty good. The monster, or whatever it was, looked cool when the view was obstructed, but I didn't care for it when you got a good look at it. I also loved the shots where someone would be submerged and see someone standing on the edge of the water, but when they'd surface, there'd be nothing there. It happens multiple times, and they're all good, but the first time is legitimately frightening.
For a movie about a haunted pool (did I mention that already?) it's pretty good. I doubt I'll ever watch it again but it's fine for what it is. It has some scary moments, boneheaded decisions and a likable enough cast. But I mean... it's a movie about a haunted pool!
5.5 Dr. Chainsaws!
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