A lot has been made about the coming age of AI-generated scripts, but a movie like “Night Swim” (Peacock) makes me wonder if anyone will notice the difference. Director/co-writer Bryce McGuire’s movie – based on his short film – features a likeable family made up of good actors (led by “Monarch’s” Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt), and the potential-laden idea of a haunted swimming pool.
It’s not that the idea goes nowhere; it’s that it goes exactly where you think it will, hitting horror beats that could be programmed into a computer. We know from the flashback opening it’s an evil swimming pool, then we know it’s also a health-giving swimming pool, as Russell’s MS-stricken former ballplayer Ray Waller regains his strength. It both giveth and taketh away.
Touching all the bases
“Night Swim” gives us information, but not mystery. When wife Eve (Kerry Condon) researches the pool’s and area’s past to learn about natural underground springs and unsolved deaths, this is an opportunity for twists – or at least creepy, weighty mood – but instead it’s rote information. And information we could’ve surmised on our own, at that.
“Night Swim” (2024)
Director: Bryce McGuire
Writers: Bryce McGuire, Rod Blackhurst
Stars: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle
McGuire and co-writer Rod Blackhurst don’t even keep track of their own simple backstory. We know the initial victim was pulled into the supernatural murky depths, never to emerge, in 1992. But later Eve finds archived newspaper information that the child drowned.
The filmmakers have mixed up what they know (and the audience knows) with what people in the movie’s reality could know. If someone disappears in a large body of water, a drowning might be presumed, but in a swimming pool, a corpse would be required before authorities would assume drowning.
The warmth of the Waller family is “Night Swim’s” strength, enough to keep the film watchable for most of its 98 minutes. It’s refreshing that they all like each other and that their problems – before they realize their pool is evil — are grounded. Daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) has joined the swim team and nervously navigates a possible boyfriend, and son Elliot (Gavin Warren) feels the pressure of his father’s shadow as he joins the youth baseball team.
This is a rare film with sensible fiscal logistics. Ray’s health bills are likely high, and Eve merely works as a school secretary, but they likely have enough MLB money saved up – he used to be a decent talent with the Brewers — to justify this nice suburban house.
Afraid of the deep end
“Night Swim” whiffs on opportunities to give the horror premise verisimilitude. We believe the haunted pool for the sake of the story, as it’s spelled out clearly, but we don’t really feel it. Perhaps Izzy could’ve had a line about how this pool’s water strikes her as different from the school’s pool, for example.
Water safety is portrayed awkwardly. A key sequence features a harrowing near-drowning, but at other times people are below the surface for very long periods as they investigate or battle the ill-explained extra-dimensional evil. Not that I crave more fear about an encroaching drowning, but “Night Swim” sometimes skims over a sense of urgency about characters requiring air.
This movie reminds me of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water” (2006), which also features a swimming pool that’s a gateway to another world. Granted, “Night Swim” is not as spectacularly bad, but that previous film has Shyamalan’s stamp of glorious, idiosyncratic failure. It is clearly the work of a human being.
I don’t come away from this film thinking “swimming pools simply aren’t scary,” but rather that they aren’t scary if you don’t try to make them scary. If you are content with making a merely competent, trope-checking movie rather than something with atmosphere and mystery, you’ve succeeded merely at water safety. “Night Swim” doesn’t complete even one lap toward a race victory.