Review-NIGHT SWIM(2024)

Yesterday I got the chance to watch the new supernatural horror/thriller called Night Swim, but by the time the film revealed its main plot point, it had NOTHING to do with night or swimming.

Night Swim was brought to us by the producers behind M3GAN and The Nun, which were also very underwhelming and overrated. Blumhouse is the company behind this, so my interest was peaked. I thought this film had great potential because it had two elements that scared the shit out of me….Water and The Dark. Can yall believe at my big grown age of 35 I can’t swim and am still afraid of the dark lol.

In the cold opening of this film, we see a little girl who looks to be about eight or nine, she’s looking for a toy boat in the pool. She goes to reach for it, and I already knew she was going somehow to fall in, which she did. I wasn’t sure where they were going with this, but after her being pulled in and we get the title card, I knew they’d eventually circle back at some point. 

 After the title card we go to we meet the Waller family which consists of husband Ray, wife Eve and thier two kids Izzy and Elliot. They give us a LOT of a background with the husband, he used to play professional baseball, but he has since been diagnosed with MS and it is getting progressively worse. They’ve moved around a lot to different teams, and the kids have gone to different schools and Eve is looking to plant roots in a community. They eventually choose the same house from the cold opening.

 I felt like this movie did a great job with showing the anguish in the husband face when the doctor told him that he was getting worse. As a viewer we really could tell how defeated he was by coming to terms with not being able to play baseball anymore. I also felt bad for the wife too because her life and career was going around his schedule, and now that he was sick she had to sacrifice even more. The entire family seemed to be sacrificing themselves too.

After they get all moved in the pool seems to heal Ray. After another doctor visit the MS seems to be regressing and that’s one of the first moments we see him happy and smiling. Not too long after they move in the mysterious “entity” in the water has made everyone else in the family uneasy. Despite all their uncertainty of the pool the Waller family decides to throw a pool party at their house for the neighborhood. Things take a dark turn when the entity goes inside Ray and he becomes possessed.

 Up until this point the movie is very predictable, but I had hope for a plot twist. The wife, Eve does start asking questions about the pool and the realtor finally tells her about the previous family losing their daughter. Finally after what feels like an hour we find out the history of the pool and it’s mysterious entity. My biggest complaint about this movie is that they flew past what could’ve been a more defining plot line. They pretty much introduced and wrapped up the reasoning for why the pool’s malicious intent in one scene. They didn’t take anymore time to develop that idea any further. 

The climax and eventual ending was very underwhelming. I typically give PG-13 horror movies, a hard time, and if this PG-13 movie comes out in January, I feel like it already has two strikes against it for me personally. The reason why I don’t like PG-13 horror movies because they typically have a “everything‘s gonna be Ok” ending. I don’t like that AT ALL. I strongly believe horror movies are supposed to be scary, and they’re supposed to instill fear in you after it’s over, and if everybody lives at the end and the malicious entity is taken over then what’s the point. I actually want to see either everybody die or we get the feeling that this is going to continue even though the family itself made it out the entity will continue. I love movies like that.

 So, if I had to give Night Swim a rating, I ultimately would rate it 🍿🍿🍿 it’s OK it could’ve been better. The memorable thing about this movie is instead of a haunted house is a haunted pool. It is a copy paste attempt of every movie where a family moves into a new house and either get possessed or haunted by a malicious entity.

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