A haunted swimming pool awaits its next victim in the latest Blumhouse horror film
Inspired by the short film of the same name, Night Swim follows former baseball player Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) as he moves into a new house with his wife and two kids. Waller is forced into early retirement due to a degenerative illness. Encouraged to try water physical therapy, Ray hoped the pool at his new home could help with his illness. Little did he know, the pool had a dark history.
The official synopsis for Night Swim is below:
Based on the acclaimed 2014 short film by Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire, the film stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Oscar® nominee Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin), teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle, this fall’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and young son Elliot (Gavin Warren, Fear the Walking Dead). 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.
From Short Film to Big Screen
Inspired by the 2014 short film of the same name, the original short film is just under three minutes long, and shows how the pool – and the dark entity within its depth – claim its victim. For the feature film, the story expands to the lore of the pool by showing a flashback scene in 1992 when it claimed a young girl as its victim.
Unfortunately, the lore felt like an afterthought, with one scene explaining why the pool claims its victim but doesn’t fully explore the origin. Diving into the lore of the pool could have been compelling and made the story feel more well-rounded, and it’s a shame it didn’t have the chance to do that. One scene shows a quick flash of nurses in black and white photos during her search for the pool’s history, but it was never explored further in this movie.
Despite solid performances from the cast, the messy plot and dialogue kept this movie in the shallow end.
Check out our full review of “Night Swim” here:
