NIGHT SWIM ** USA / UK / Australia 2024 Dir: Bryce McGuire. 98 mins
Night Swim’s intriguing premise could have worked perfectly as an hour-long episode on a TV horror anthology. Sadly, Blumhouse Production’s first 2024 offering swims down a route of a feature film and well, sinks.
With that being said, Night Swim isn’t as unsatisfactory as the year’s other Blumhouse blunder Imaginary. The film’s tension-building around a cursed swimming pool is enough to offer genuine chills, especially for the morbidly hydrophobic viewers.
While nothing can truly match the outlandish Final Destination death that finds a pool’s suction literally sucking a swimmer inside out, Night Swim has some harrowing aquatic moments that remind non-swimmers again why the backside pool is just another watery grave.
Wyatt Russell continues his father Kurt’s Poseidon legacy in this poolside horror, starring as a once-glorious baseballer who must retire now owing to a life-changing illness. He and his wife (The Banshees of Inisherin’s Oscar-nominated Kerry Condon) desire a fresh start, leading them to a new home with a beatdown pool that they get for quite a steal.
And we all know what happens when you get your hands on good property at cheap prices. Maintenance costs! (and of course, a ghost or two).
The pool hasn’t been used for ages and is clogged with what seems like brackish water. But when the family has it restored, underwater ghoulies approach and ominous voices flow with the waves.
The premise sounds cliched but the execution of these underwater scares is still worthy of some appreciation. Instead of just playing around with the pool lights in the dark, writer-director Bryce McGuire does aim to build tension even in the daylight with one scene set in the middle of a sunbathed neighbourhood party.
Sadly, these brief moments of terror aren’t enough to sustain Night Swim as a whole. The emotional undertones for Russell’s tragic protagonist again never really swim to the shore, courtesy of a heavily derivative third act which is hard to take seriously especially in the face of some laughably artificial special effects.
Back in 2014, McGuire had initially conceptualised Night Swim as a low-budget, five-minute indie short that unexpectedly went viral on YouTube. Perhaps a shorter format is what suited it best.
If there’s anything to take from Night Swim’s ending, it’s an 80s retro-pop-inspired song “Deeper” by the synth-pop duo Even Beyond Even Beyond. Now, that’s one banger that deserved a better horror!
Review by Shaurya Thapa
NIGHT SWIM is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and USA
Also available to buy on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK. A 4K UHD & Blu-Ray release is scheduled for 6th May 2024 in the UK
Also available to buy on Blu-ray + DVD + Digital and DVD in the USA