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| Images courtesy of Universal Pictures |
January is upon us and so is the hybrid mixture of post-2023
December releases and the so-called ‘dumping ground’ 2024 winter title drops
where studios unsure of what to do with delayed or outright shelved movies
clear some out. While not all of it is
bad with some of the previous year’s best films (The Zone of Interest notably)
merely being pushed into the new year, the ‘dumping ground’ moniker is usually
earned with good reason. Equally of
trend in specifically the horror subgenre are the proliferation of short films
being developed and expanded into feature length projects, having done it with Come
Play, Lights Out and now today’s Atomic Monster/Blumhouse merger Night
Swim.
Based off of a 2014 short film of the same name by
writer-director Bryce McGuire and co-writer/director Rod Blackhurst, it told of
a supernaturally haunted swimming pool which terrorizes and tries to
consume/absorb the owner. Running a
brisk four minutes, the concept has now been fleshed out to involve an entire
family moving into the household not knowing of the pool’s past. Though slick with some striking visual
effects and many obvious inspirations worn proudly on its sleeves, it never
quite banks on the promise of the short or what lengths of horror lunacy we’ve
come to expect from the production company behind Malignant or M3GAN.
Disabled former Milwaukee Brewers baseball star Ray (Wyatt
Russell) and wife Eve Waller (Kerry Condon) move into a new house with their
two children Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren). Suffering from multiple sclerosis and slowly
losing his mobility, Ray is struck by the therapeutic aspects of the swimming
pool in his new home’s backyard and not long after immersing himself in the
pool he seems to start healing. However,
at two different times Izzy and Elliot have terrifying supernatural encounters
in the pool and soon the family notices a change in personality and physique of
their father, building towards a bizarre if not a little absurd foray into Poltergeist
pool fare including but not limited to zombies, a Viy-like monster and
a lot of evil black sludge (Spider-Man 3 anyone?).
A handsomely shot, blocked and edited low budget thriller
channeling everything from Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, The
Abyss and The Ring, despite these ingredients the film never fully
kicks into the bonkers mode established by the previous aforementioned James
Wan and Jason Blum offerings. Shot in
scope by Charlie Sarroff (probably the best aspect of the film) and given a
serviceable horror score by Mark Korven who himself has done far better
soundtracks for The Witch and The Lighthouse, Night Swim looks
and sounds pretty with some shimmering underwater cinematography. Performance wise the cast is fine though
Oscar nominated Kerry Condon is stuck in a kind of thankless soccer mom role. Wyatt Russell is generally good in expressing
the dad’s subtle transformation though debatably the ones with the most heavy
lifting are the child stars.
In theaters tomorrow, Night Swim is a decent if not
mediocre January horror offering which sadly is among the weaker Atomic
Monster/Blumhouse collaborations. Though
given a decent budget with some wild vistas near the end when it starts leaning
more and more into James Cameron meets George A. Romero underwater fare,
something is amiss in how it never fully reaches anywhere close to the heights
of their prior offerings. As a short
film reworked into a feature it expands upon the source considerably but for
all the noise and jump scares laced with fake outs the scares or outlandishness
never really clicks. All in all, a noble
effort which like the pool water itself ripples and splashes about a little
before returning to dull flatness. With
a setup and producing talent like this behind it, we surely should expect
cannonballs!
--Andrew Kotwicki
