The Doctor’s Diagnosis: F
2024 gets right down to business with this pathetic excuse for a horror movie that is already the front-runner for the worst film of the year. It’s a tradition (for some reason) for a terrible horror movie to come out in January, so I didn’t exactly go into the theater expecting Night Swim to be a contender for best picture of the year. But I assure you that you can’t possibly set your expectations low enough for this movie to meet them.
Night Swim is about an evil swimming pool. That should be enough of a review right there, but I guess I’ll continue. Our family of protagonists is moving into a new house and they chose the new home primarily because of the pool. The father (played by Wyatt Russell) is a former professional baseball player that was diagnosed with MS and he wants to swim as part of the physical therapy needed for him to play ball again. The plan works and he begins a miraculous recovery as soon as he starts swimming, but it comes at the cost of Goosebumps-level spooky shenanigans happening. I don’t want to spoil the mystery of the evil pool, so I’ll just say that it’s stupid. Really, really stupid.
This movie feels like it was written as a parody of haunted house movies, but nobody involved in the production got the joke. It would be like if a producer read the script for The Naked Gun but misinterpreted it as a serious cop thriller. I’m reminded of the great horror/comedy House and I think that Night Swim could have worked if it was done in the vein and the tone of that movie. But it isn’t. Everyone is playing this completely straight and I went the whole movie thinking that the filmmakers were pulling my leg. I don’t care what kind of weird shit is happening around my house, I wouldn’t come to the conclusion that my swimming pool is trying to murder me. But these characters not only come to that ridiculous conclusion, they do it with very little prompting. A character will think that they will see a figure outside the pool while they are swimming and immediately conclude that the pool is evil. Not the house, not the property, just the pool. Haunted house movies can also be annoying when characters refuse to acknowledge that a house is clearly haunted, but I would push to have these people committed to a mental hospital if I was their neighbor.
The movie lifts elements from many other haunted house movies, but the villain is a fucking pool so nothing makes sense. I guess the pool can also control the tap water? Okay, it’s a big stretch, but they are both water. But how did it turn the TV on and cue up the dad’s baseball highlight reel? Does the pool just always have that footage cued up? These questions aren’t answered because 1. There is no answer because it’s a fucking pool and 2. These scenes only exist so that the movie can try to be Poltergeist. The father starts becoming evil for no apparent reason except so that the movie can copy The Amityville Horror and The Shining. And why did the pool go after the cat? What the fuck is happening in this movie?
I feel like a broken record saying that modern PG-13 horror movies are pathetically unscary, but this isn’t even trying. I vaguely remember an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? about a haunted pool that was more frightening than this and that was a goddamn Nickelodeon show. The only on-screen blood is when a character slips on haunted tap water and cuts her hand on glass. She’s fine, but the film lingers on this like it is the movie’s big money shot. If your kids think that Megan and Five Nights at Freddy’s are good horror movies, then Night Swim might scare the shit out of them. Your kids will probably also still need a night light and a blanky when they are 40, but they might enjoy this.
While walking out of the theater, one of my friends remarked that this is the worst movie that she has ever seen. I’m not going nearly that far, but I would put this on par with Five Nights at Freddy’s and I absolutely despised that movie. I’m not a praying man, but please god let this be the worst movie of 2024. I’m just not mentally prepared to go down hill from here.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Swim_(film)#/media/File:Night_swim_poster.jpg
