As deep as the shallow end.
Well, it is January again. It is time for the holiday decorations to be put away, to get started on New Year’s resolutions, and to see what horror films are out right now. Yes, January horror films tend to be hit or miss, but lately, there seem to be more success as of late. Now along comes Night Swim, written and directed by Bryce McGuire, based on his 2014 short of the same name. After a year of cinema that felt rather divisive and underwhelming, can Night Swim start 2024 off on a promising note? Nope, not even on a surface level.
The film stars Wyatt Russell as Ray Waller, a former baseball player suffering from multiple sclerosis. He and his family decide to relocate to a new town and settle on a house that has a swimming pool in the back, which would help with Ray’s physical therapy. What the realtor did not tell the family was that in 1992, a young girl disappeared while taking a swim at night. After Ray and his family move in and renovate the pool, strange things start happening the more they swim, and they start hearing and seeing potential spirits. As they gradually discover the evil lurking beneath the surface, the family must band together and escape the pool’s clutches before it takes another life.
The original short that the film is based on is not long, only about four minutes, and the plot is no more than a character getting killed while taking a night swim. With a simple idea like this, one wonders how Hollywood can extend it to a feature length film and maintain interest. Well, hopefully most audiences are into baseball and medical talk, because that takes up a good portion of this film’s story. Most of it feels like it should belong in an inspirational sports drama, even though it does not feel inspirational in the slightest. It doesn’t even feel scary, because the film as an overall experience is unfocused and feels like an unnatural hodgepodge of ideas.
Night Swim is not the Bryce McGuire’s directorial debut, as he has directed nine shorts and one feature before. Weirdly enough, though, this film feels like a filmmakers first time behind the camera. Most of the cinematography feels flat, and the blue-gray color palette is unappealing to look at. Even the “suspenseful ” scenes feel calculated and predictable because they do not appear to be shot correctly. While the opening shot is fine, as well as a few underwater scenes, including one involving bubbles, the look of the film is amateurish. Even the way some of the actors are positioned in frame feel off and can keep them from establishing any sort of connection with viewers. The closest this film gets to being interesting is in a scene involving a piece of glass, which at least offers a suspenseful setup. When the payoff does occur, though, it does not affect much in the grand scheme of things. As a result, it feels less of a crafted set-piece and more like a director wanting to include something he saw in a movie he liked.
One can make the argument that this film is supposed to be campy and silly. Well, at the risk of using a cheesy pun, that argument does not hold much water. The reason is because it does not feel campy all the time. Granted, there are a few scenes that are ironically funny, but most of the film feels dreadful and straightforward. It is almost as if McGuire wasn’t confident in his own story. In the hands of a filmmaker like Tobe Hooper or Joe Dante, this film would have had both an edge and a more consistent comedic tone. With the number of films that Blumhouse produces a year, they could have afforded to take more of a risk on a film with a sill premise.
The few laughs that this film earns are due to the horrendous screenplay that is riddled with exposition and non-sensical foreshadowing. The film has a lot of good actors like Russell and Martin McDonagh-regular Kerry Condon, who appear to be in pain reciting this dialogue. While dialogue is flat out boring in the first half, it turns to practically comical the more the characters start talking about the pool. Another stand out is the older sister threatening the younger brother to not tattle on her, or she would put a tide pod is his fishbowl. Apparently, no one on set thought these lines would sound unnatural to the human ear. Even the ending, which should feel like that of Poltergeist, feels more like the ending of Gladiator.
Overall, Night Swim provides fragments of ironic entertainment, but is overall an empty experience. The film would’ve benefited from just fully embracing a campy tone and making the experience more fun. Hollywood needs to have more of an idea of who goes to these films and what they would be expecting. It isn’t wise to impulsively take risks on every single film, but some need that risk. Also, if a studio is looking to make some scares, it is going to take more than flashing lights and a few games of “Marco Polo.” So, should people go and see Night Swim? Marco no-no!
