The spoopy pool.

I’m writing this review while waiting for the release of Spin the Bottle, proving that by 2100 literally every object in the world will have a dedicated movie about a haunted version of it. It’s a movie about a haunted swimming pool that eats children and pussy cats. It’s the last film partly produced by Atomic Monster before their merger with Blumhouse, and if you think about it…it makes sense.

Night Swim was directed by Bryce McGuire and written by Bryce McGuire. Ironic considering the lead character Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is a baseball player. Ray is currently out of the game owing to multiple sclerosis. He moves with his suburban white family to a new house with his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) and daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and son Elliot (Gavin Warren). I love Kerry Condon, you’ll remember her as Siobhán Súilleabháin in The Banshees of Inisherin.

Things seem to be coming up Milhouse as Ray’s MS starts healing inexplicably from swimming in the pool. But then some weird shit starts happening in the pool. Elliot hears the voice of a little girl who drowned in the pool sometime prior, and then a ghost hair demon hair spirit demon grabs his arm from inside the filter. Izzy is on a secret date with a guy from school and she gets attacked by a demon spirit demon in the pool. Oh and Ray tries to drown a child in the pool during a summer party, and honestly who among us can say we’re not guilty of a similar charge?

Incidentally Kerry Condon is the most intelligent person in the movie despite her kids having contact with a literal demon first. Eve is the one to piece the clues together around this creepy pool and be like “yeah this bitch is haunted, maybe I should do something about it.” Unfortunately it takes her down a completely predictable path in learning about the pool. Has the pool been killing people for decades? Oh yeah. Is there a legend around the lands the pool was built on going back centuries? You bet your voluptuous ass there is. Will we get the plot exposited in one scene by an old Asian lady who is also infected by the pool? Of course.

The positive part of the movie is that it has a strong cast. Once again I love Kerry Condon. Wyatt Russell is a good actor, as are the kids. Nancy Lenehan plays realtor Kay and is as talented as you’d expect for a woman who has been acting since 1980. Eddie Martinez is here as Coach E, Jodi Long plays Lucy Summers. Everyone is fine, and that’s where my positive points end.

I have a few problems with this film. In case you didn’t figure it out, I think the plot is complete dumpster garbage and it’s one of those cases where I’m saddened that Blumhouse and Atomic Monster make their films at such low cost because this one didn’t deserve a profit even if it was just $54 million on top of a $15 million budget. They throw just about every cheap horror trope into this movie and it is boring as hell. The CG is absolutely awful including the demons, and there is a point where the film needs to get Izzy by herself for a spoopy moment in the pool, so the other character literally just walks off screen and goes who knows where until it’s over.

You can tell that Blumhouse was the primary driver behind this movie because I’ve seen Atomic Monster’s horror films (The Conjuring Universe) and they are much higher quality than this. Night Swim constantly feels like it’s trying to pull from better horror movies with clear nods to Psycho, The Shining, Jaws, and unfortunately it fails on all of those fronts. It just made me want to watch the better movies. Every jump scare is telegraphed for a solid minute before it happens and when they come they aren’t scary owing to the awful cheap CG.

At 99 minutes, Night Swim is a waste of 120 minutes of your life.

Rating: F