Film Review: ‘Night Swim’ is a Floating Turd to Start Off the Year in Horror

2024 is poised to be a really great year for horror. Whether it’s MaXXXine, Saw XI, Terrifier 3, They Follow, or several others, the genre could have one of its best years in some time. I speak of the highs mainly to give relief to those of you who end up seeing Night Swim, since it’s certainly going to be one of the lowest lows. A jump scare laden flick without scares, no logic, and a pointless nature, it’s a fairly depressing way to start off the new cinematic season.

Night Swim doesn’t bother to have any real rules for its supernatural situation, and what few it does, it quickly breaks/disregards. The result is something you never care for a moment about, even when it’s trying to have something to say about sacrifice. The germ of a good idea is here, admittedly, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is a former major league baseball player who’s been forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness. While searching for a permanent home after having had to move every time he was traded, Ray and his wife Eve (Kerry Condon), along with teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and younger son Elliot (Gavin Warren), come across a seemingly perfect house. Plus, it has a pool, which Ray can use for water therapy. As he has a secret hope to beat the odds and return to play third base for the Milwaukee Brewers, Ray convinces Eve that it’s where they should put down roots.

Convinced that the swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him, Eve agrees. Almost immediately, however, something malevolent appears to be residing in the pool. Initially, they shrug off Elliot’s fear, as well as the strange way that Ray starts acting. But, as each of them experiences some kind of horror, Eve begins looking into the home’s past, discovering something terrifying in the process.

Both Kerry Condon and Wyatt Russell are too good for the likes of this. Hell, Amélie Hoeferle and Gavin Warren are as well, they just don’t have Condon and Russell’s résumés. Unfortunately, Condon just has to play a concerned mother and wife who eventually has to become a badass, while Russell mopes about. The charisma he possesses is not in evidence at all. The family unit, as a dynamic, works decently well, but it’s the cast doing that, as opposed to the script, which is all wet, no pun intended. Supporting players include Jodi Long, Eddie Martinez, Elijah Roberts, and more.

Filmmaker Bryce McGuire, along with co-writer Rod Blackhurst, adapts their short of the same name, with pretty poor results. So many repetitive shots of obscured things in the water prevent any of the supposedly terrifying sequences from landing, while the monster in the water aspect makes zero sense. Without getting into spoilers, Blackhurst and McGuire’s screenplay tries to add some late stage mythology, but it only makes things dumber. McGuire’s direction obfuscates instead of doing anything to suck you in, so you’ll laugh here more often than you’ll scream.

Night Swim is a floating turd to start off the year in horror. The rest of the year can only really go up, not just in terms of horror, but film in general. So little of it works, you just throw up your hands and wait for it to be over. It’s destined to be forgotten about, but even with the lower standard of the first week of January dumping ground, it comes up exceedingly short.

SCORE: ★1/2