Night Swim is a 2024 supernatural horror film written and directed by Bryce McGuire, and based on the 2014 short film of the same name by McGuire and Rod Blackhurst. The film stars Wyatt Russell (22 Jump Street, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Kerry Condon (Better Call Saul, The Banshees of Inisherin), Amélie Hoeferle (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), and Gavin Warren (First Man).

Ray Waller (Russell) is a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness. He moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Condon) and their two children (Hoeferle and Warren). Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.

James Wan and Jason Blum serve as producers under their Atomic Monster and Blumhouse Productions banners, respectively.

Night Swim made its debut in theaters January 5th, courtesy of Universal Pictures.

THE GOOD

I’m a big fan of Blumhouse and will give anything they do a chance, plus the trailers for Night Swim were fantastic in my opinion. Early on I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around how this premise would make for a feature-length film, but I was intrigued nonetheless. Not only did it seem like the production value for the film was top-notch, I really liked the cast which featured Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon who was amazing in last years award-winning drama The Banshees of Inisherin (our full review here).

So as the film neared release I reached out to a buddy of mine asking if he wanted to tag along and his exact words were “I’m not going to see a stupid PG-13 horror movie about a swimming pool”. I tend to take what he says with a grain of salt but he did have a point. Nonetheless, you know damn well I had my ass planted in that comfy movie theater seat with a warm bucket of popcorn hoping I would have the opportunity to tell him he missed out. So, was Night Swim a pleasant surprise or was the seemingly ridiculous premise just too much? Keep reading to find out!

Alright so I didn’t exactly call him up right away and tell him how stupid he was for not coming to see the movie with me, but I did send him a text that was likely much more positive than he expected. Considering the fact that my expectations were in check for the most part Night Swim actually had some good qualities as far as horror films go. Once the title hit the screen at the end right before the credits, I felt okay about it. I had my issues for sure which I will talk more about later, but the overall experience felt polished with great production value and some really good acting from the cast, as well as all of the great technical elements you would want from a horror film including an eerie score and some very creepy and effective visuals. Plus at the end of the day if you are easily scared Night Swim at the very least will surely keep you out of the swimming pool for awhile.

I knew the cast would be a strength for the film going in and that was the case. Although he won’t be mistaken for a A-list actor anytime soon I have become a fan of Wyatt Russell, the son of cinema legends Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. Russell has been afford some decent opportunities as of late which he has taken advantage of, including a role in Richard Linklater’s 2016 film Everybody Wants Some!! (full review here), the Marvel series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and the new sci-fi series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, also starring his dad. Russell has proven he has legit range as an actor and I really liked him in this role.

Starring alongside Russell is Kerry Condon and I thought she was great. She took on the role of the sympathetic wife and mother who was began to suspect something wasn’t right pretty early on and I thought she was believable throughout the film. The son and daughter are played by Gavin Warren and Amélie Hoeferle and I liked both of their characters. All things considered I thought both delivered very solid performances and helped to keep up the eerie feel of the film. As I said overall the cast was very much a bright spot for the film.

As outlandish as the premise seems on paper, Night Swim actually has some decent material to work with as far as the screenplay. There is definitely more than meets the eye as far as the origin of the story behind this sinister swimming pool, and I was actually impressed with the core of the overall story. In some ways the premise resembles The Amityville Horror in the sense that it is very much a haunted house type film with the element of evil stemming from this swimming pool. Unfortunately they had plenty of missteps in terms of where they decided to take the story which is unfortunate, but I will talk more about that later. Just the fact that I wasn’t just shaking my head for the majority of the film felt like a win.

THE BAD

Night Swim managed to surprise me in many ways but by the end it felt like a missed opportunity. As I mentioned the production value was top notch and the acting was above average, but the screenplay for all of its promise held the film back. Early on it felt to me like the setup was damn near perfect in terms of establishing backstory and getting viewers invested. I found myself genuinely intrigued as the story unfolded and I wanted to know what would happen next, until I didn’t. Unfortunately the story seemed to stumble and run out of steam right around the third act as it struggled to maintain that gritty horror feel. Bottom line, this movie absolutely needed to have an R-rating, simple as that. I just feel like this movie needed to be much darker to realize the vision they were hinting at from the beginning, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

To be honest I get really annoyed when these horror films decide to go PG-13 essentially handcuffing themselves when it comes to the hard-hitting horror films genre fans like myself gravitate towards like The Ring, Sinister, Hereditary, The Dark and the Wicked, or the more recent horror film Smile (our full review here). What these films have in common is a story that sticks with you because of how intense and gut-wrenching the film is by the final act. In order to make a PG-13 horror film really work, you need to be incredibly creative or simply embrace the fact that you aren’t really trying to terrify viewers. I am confident that if Night Swim went with a R-rating it would have been much more effective and another notch in the belt for Jason Blum and Blumhouse.

THE VERDICT

A serviceable horror thriller with above average production value and a talented cast, Night Swim brings to the surface some effective scares but is ultimately confined to the shallow end by a PG-13 rating. This could have been so much better, but to say it is unwatchable really isn’t fair. Casual horror fans will have plenty to be excited about with Night Swim and will likely avoid the pool for awhile, but unfortunately decisions were made that just left too much meat on the bone. At the very least this is something a little different and if you go in with tempered expectations it is worth a watch.