Director/Screenplay – Bryce McGuire, Screen Story – Rod Blackhurst & Bryce McGuire, Based on the Short Film by Rod Blackhurst & Bryce McGuire, Producers – Jason Blum & James Wan, Photography – Charlie Sarroff, Underwater Photography – Ian S. Takahashi, Music – Mark Korven, Visual Effects Supervisor – Melissa Brockman, Visual Effects – Cosa VFX Inc. (Supervisor – Christopher Lance) & Fin Design + Effects (Supervisor – Jonathan Dearing), Prosthetic Makeup – Fractured FX (Designer – Justin Raleigh), Production Design – Hilary Gurtler. Production Company – Blumhouse/Atomic Monster.
Cast
Wyatt Russell (Ray Waller), Kerry Condon (Eve Waller), Amelie Hoeferle (Izzy Waller), Gavin Warren (Elliot Waller), Jodi Long (Lucy Summers), Nancy Lenehan (Kay), Eddie Martinez (Coach K), Elijah Roberts (Ronin), Rahnuma Panthaky (Dr. Sridhar), Ben Sinclair (Pool Tech), Ayazhan Dalabayeva (Rebecca), Ellie Araiza (Angel Martinez), Joziah Lagonoy (Tommy Martinez)
Plot
Star baseball player Ray Waller has been forced to drop out of the game due to an injury. He and his wife Eve decide to buy a house in the Twin Cities area and move in with their two children Izzy and Elliot. The house comes with a swimming pool in the yard. After swimming in it, Ray starts making remarkable physical recovery. However, the others find something sinister about the pool – they can hear voices calling to them and believe that the pool is trying to kill them and others.
Night Swim was a directorial debut for Bryce McGuire, who around the same time also wrote the script for another horror film Baghead (2023). McGuire had originally made the basis of this as the fourth-minute short film Night Swim (2014). The full-length film was picked up by James Wan’s Atomic Monster production company and made as a co-production with Blumhouse (see below for Blumhouse’s other films).
There haven’t been that many horror or genre films about swimming pools. There have been well worthwhile films with individual sequences set in pools, most famously Cat People (1942) and Les Diaboliques (1955). There have been a certain number of films that feature resident monsters loose in a pool such as Alligator (1980), Piranha 3DD (2012) and the absurdities of Roboshark (2015) and Ouija Shark (2020). There are several films that involve scenes with people trapped under or attacked by pool covers as in Ghost in the Machine (1993), The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) and A Murder at the End of the World (2023).
Beyond horror approaches, you could look to the trans-dimensional pool in Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995), Bryce Dallas Howard as the water nymph who emerges from a pool in Lady in the Water (2006) or the pool containing alien pods with rejuvenating powers in Cocoon (1985). However, all of these are just individual scenes and there are not many films that feature swimming pools as a central locale – the only ones that come to mind are the thriller 12 Feet Deep (2017) with two girls trapped under a pool cover and the gripping Thai-made The Pool (2018) with a couple trapped in an empty pool with a hungry crocodile.
Kerry Condon goes swimming in the pool
Night Swim feels no different than the standard Haunted House film. It has the same essential plot – family move into a new house and hear mysterious voices calling to them, objects moving of their own accord and things happening with no apparent explanation. And that is before things turn malevolent and people start being harmed or killed. It is all tied back to a sinister past that has happened to other residents since at least the 19th Century. People even seem to become possessed by the entity behind all of this. The only real difference is that all of the action here is centred around the swimming pool.
There is nothing that Night Swim delivers beyond the basic rudiments of atmosphere. There is little real tension and nothing that makes you spooked. The one jumpscare offered is the lame one where Amelie Hoeferle is swimming and encounters a bloated corpse in the pool. The rest is just the formula that Blumhouse has charted out for itself by now.
