Verdict
Summary
When I saw the trailers for Night Swim I was very, very skeptical about going to see it in a theater: A haunted swimming pool movie did not sound compelling in the slightest, but I must admit that after watching it at home for this review that the movie isn’t half bad for a spooker.
Plot:
A family moves into a house with a haunted swimming pool.
Review:
Ray (Wyatt Russell) and his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) are looking to restart their lives with their children after Ray’s career in the major leagues is sidelined when he is diagnosed with MS, and they settle into an old home in a nice neighborhood. The home has a pool, which they’re excited about, but since this is a horror movie there’s definitely something up with the land, but more specifically the pool. The water itself is a cursed element, connected to an ancient spring that has a strange unholy power to grant wishes, but with the wish there is (of course) a costly price to pay in blood. As Ray’s MS clears up, the pool demands and chooses Ray and Eve’s son be forfeit to the spring as payment, and so the family must work to unravel the mystery behind the curse and its tragic history of families before them who had to make a sacrifice in order to keep their wish intact. Going for a night swim will never be the same again for this unfortunate family.
When I saw the trailers for Night Swim I was very, very skeptical about going to see it in a theater: A haunted swimming pool movie did not sound compelling in the slightest, but I must admit that after watching it at home for this review that the movie isn’t half bad for a spooker. I grew up with a swimming pool in my backyard and there was definitely something spooky about going for a swim at night, and even during the day I would sometimes think there was a shark coming for me when I wasn’t looking. I would scare myself and find myself skittering around the water in fear. So, yes: I understood the horror element of this movie and it worked as a PG-13 scare flick. I liked the mythological subtext of it, and while it descends into very obvious storytelling tropes for a horror film and basically emulates all of the Amityville Horror type haunted house movies with slow possession and madness (and even the evil dad who turns on his family), I still found it surprisingly easy to watch, and it worked for me on a simplistic level. It’s silly, but it’s not nearly as goofy as it could’ve been, and the plot resembles one of those ’70s / ’80s horror paperbacks when Stephen King and Dean Koontz were all the rage. From director Bryce McGuire.
Universal has just released Night Swim onto a Blu-ray / DVD / Digital Code combo pack, and special features include some choice special features including “Masters of Fear,” “Demons From the Depths,” “Into the Deep,” and more.
