Title – Night Swim (2024) 

Director – Bryce McGuire (Unfollowed) 

Cast – Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren

Plot – Close-knit family the Waller’s move into their new home but their backyard pool begins to make them uneasy as the start to suspect something is amiss with their new acquisition.  

“The pool’s the greatest thing to happen to me!”

Review by Eddie on 18/09/2024

A notorious dumping/burial ground for feature films, January has a long and storied history of unleashing an abundance of hellishly bad films onto audiences over a number of decades but 2024 January release Night Swim has quickly joined the top tier ranks of badness with a wet on arrival experience that provides about as much entertainment as you’d get out of submerging yourself in freezing cold water in the heart of winter for 90 minutes. 

Shamefully produced by long time horror players James Wan and Jason Blum, who should both have known better than to encourage paying cinemagoers to dive into writer/director Bryce McGuire’s feature adaptation of his own short film, Night Swim wants to explore what would happen if a literal swimming pool became haunted (a scenario I am fairly sure no one wanted to explore in depth) and progresses to provide us with 98 minutes of painfully dull and far from scary situations that you wonder whether we should be taking as serious or comical? 

Somehow enlisting (I really hope the paycheques were worth the soul selling) the support of well-liked performers Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon to play couple Ray and Eve Waller, Night Swim follows the Waller’s as they buy a new house with a lovely looking swimming pool only to quickly discover that this bonus addition to the house is not a place to enjoy a quiet swim in as missing cats, eventful games of Marco Polo and waterlogged zombie ghosts that look fresh out of a cheap PS2-era videogame take hold and McGuire and co-writer Rod Blackhurst unleash one of the years worst screenplays on us against our will. 

Perhaps having some merit as a short film, stretching Night Swim’s narrative out over such a large time was an unwarranted step as none of the characters presented here or the scenarios that they find themselves are in could be considered engaging, surprising or inventive as we move from scene to scene that often involves a different member of the Waller family having a strange experience during a casual swim and then moves to a rushed finale that tries to expand the lore of the pool at the centre of all the shenanigans.

There’s little to get excited about and anyone looking for a casual scare or two will be left with nothing but odd references to old Australian prime ministers and decent actors sullying their name brand with poor roles. 

The type of experience that should have stayed in its own lane and out of cinemas, Night Swim would not even have been worthy of an uncelebrated direct to streaming release, a genuinely atrocious movie devoid of spark or a reason to care, here’s hoping this one quickly sinks to the bottom of the pile as viewers can discover some worthy genre offerings throughout the rest of 2024. 

Final Say – 

If a film like Night Swim can be financed and released on such a large scale it gives hope to anyone looking to get their worthy or unworthy feature made. A new low for features with James Wan and Jason Blum’s names associated to it, Night Swim should be avoided at all costs. 

1/2 a toy boat out of 5