Review by C.J. Bunce
It has the vibe of an M. Night Shyamalan movie, but it’s not The Lady in the Water, despite the title Night Swim. Yes, it’s a horror flick about creepy water, but that’s not really a great title for what’s going on here. In terms of horror, you can expect some mid-level eerie versus gross-out, slashery scares, but as another Blumhouse creation mainstream enough for anyone looking for a horror fix, it works. It piles on lots of horror tropes. In fact you might see a scene or two that has you recall Amityville Horror, Burnt Offerings, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Swamp Thing, Skeleton Key, The Black Phone, I Am the Pretty Thing that Lived in the House, Poltergeist, Fallen, The Ring, Final Destination, The Shining, Donnie Darko, The Omen, and yes, Jaws. It’s none of those, but if you like even a handful of these films you’ll probably want to check it out.
An early 2024 theatrical release, Night Swim is streaming now on Peacock.
The widest appeal for the movie is of course star Wyatt Russell. It must have been fun for the actor who hails from Kurt Russell’s The Battered Bastards of Baseball and Lodge 49, where Russell played a down and out young man working as a pool cleaner. Here Russell plays Ray Waller, a professional baseball player taking a leave from the major leagues for health reasons. Turns out his MS is actually only getting worse, until a search for a new home brings him to a house with a swimming pool that seems to be healing him.
A little girl may have drowned in the pool, and soon the family’s cat goes missing. Kerry Condon plays wife Eve, who supports Ray, but notices something is amiss with the pool. Ray notices it, too, but sees its value to him. Even the two kids soon realize the pool is bad news.
But what’s behind it? A creepy pool repairman? Something supernatural? Is this a monster movie? A ghost story? Or something else?
From new writer-director Bryce McGuire, put this in line as a better Blumhouse horror movie than Freaky and Five Nights at Freddy’s, but not in the league of the studio’s better fare like Happy Death Day, Split, Halloween, The Black Phone, or M3GAN. For fans of Wyatt Russell, it will be worth watching just to see what he does next.
Night Swim is now streaming on Peacock.
