‘Night Swim’ is January horror goofiness

Death Pool: The Pool that Eats!

Image: Universal Pictures

Now that the calendar has flipped to January, it’s out with prestige and in with unambitious comedy, action, and horror. That sort of thing can be a relief for us critics after months of awards cramming, but not when the January offerings are something as ridiculous as Night Swim, a piece of subpar Blumhouse horror that plays like a pool-based riff on Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. 

It’s a high-concept horror picture about a family moving into an idyllic suburban home, only to discover that, yes, the pool is haunted. 

You might think this project originated when one executive handed another a napkin inscribed with “Haunted Pool,” but in fact, it’s an adaptation by writer/director Bryce McGuire of his previous short, from back in 2014. 

The family is led by Ray and Eve, played by the very overqualified duo of Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon, and they’ve just bought a new house in what’s supposed to be the suburban Twin Cities, although the movie was filmed in California. 

He’s a retired baseball player, recently forced out of the game due to early-stage multiple sclerosis, while she’s a school administrator. They have a son and a daughter and are eager to settle down after Ray was traded frequently throughout his baseball career (though we only ever see him in the uniform of the Milwaukee Brewers.)  

So they buy what seems to be an ideal suburban house, although it’s one not as luxurious as a many-year major league veteran could probably afford.

But unfortunately, it turns out that yes, the pool can kill people and is also haunted, while also providing miraculous healing properties. That is, alas, probably too many magical properties for one pool to have. 

Indeed, the film does get around to explaining what’s going on, in a horrifying scene with Jodi Long as a former owner of the house. But the actual rules of what the pool can and can’t do are kind of all over the place. Sometimes they apply to the water in the actual house and other times they don’t; someone at my screening asked whether the toilets were haunted too (I would see that movie!)

The pool threatens to tear the family apart, and also to ostracize them from their new neighbors.

There are so many baffling choices here. The film establishes that a male romantic suitor of the daughter is a believing Christian and part of a faith-based swim club (“Swim for Him.”) I thought this might end up as important to the plot somehow but it barely comes up again. The son is off-camera for a key moment when he absolutely shouldn’t be. 

This film exists in a world in which there is no such thing as home inspections, nor any type of research or due diligence by home buyers. There’s not even Zillow or any other tool that would indicate the purchase of a house where many people in the past have died in the pool. I’ve seen home purchase agreements fall apart at the 11th hour over much, much less than failure to disclose past violent deaths.  

Plus, I grew up in Minnesota. When there’s a child's disappearance or death, that kid tends to become a household name in the neighborhood and surrounding area.

Also, it’s a world where Little League season for some reason starts at the beginning of the school year, and where the weather is warm enough in Minnesota in the fall for outdoor pool parties. Suburban Minneapolis is also not known for having a lot of underground hot springs, and the film ignores that the haunted pool if it’s not drained, likely freezes solid every winter. 

I enjoyed the performances, especially Russell once again playing a baseball player almost a decade after Everybody Wants Some!! The Irish actress Kerry Condon, so fantastic in The Banshees of Inisherin, does fine as his wife, doing a passable American accent. 

And yes, thanks to that title, I had the R.E.M. song Nightswimming in my head the entire time. 

In the end, Night Swim is not likely to be remembered as one of the Blumhouse factory’s better efforts.