By its very nature, a haunted-swimming-pool horror — an admittedly minor subgenre — shouldn’t work. Just how many times can characters dip in and out of the water before it becomes maddening for the audience (have you tried… not going into the pool?), or before the potential for submerged scares is fully tapped out? Major kudos, then, to filmmaker Bryce McGuire for maximising the possibilities of such a seemingly limited (and hokey) premise — his feature debut Night Swim is overflowing with smart ideas for fright-filled set-pieces, adapting his 2014 short film (co-directed by Rod Blackhurst) into a largely impressive popcorn shocker.
The sight of a suburban backyard pool isn’t inherently frightening, but McGuire and cinematographer Charlie Sarroff (who previously lensed Smile and Relic) create a depth of dread with crisp, stylish, water-centric photography, using those aquatic properties to eerily distort imagery via queasy rippling effects, shafts of refracted light and pin-sharp reflections. It’s mightily effective. When the camera hovers just above the water, you’re left squirming at the thought of what lies beneath. And whenever it dips below, the shimmering surface suddenly seems miles away — particularly in moments where the pool is envisioned as an eerie infinite ocean. The film’s most seemingly restrictive arena instead becomes a playground for an array of inventive sequences: a coin-collecting game in the deep end; a pool party packed with potential victims; a hormone-raging round of Marco Polo gone wrong; a head-swivelling front-crawl POV shot that teases half-glimpsed ghouls.
Gestures towards IT, The Shining, Jaws and Poltergeist while remaining well-conceived in its own right.
The real key to making the scares land is ensuring you care about the characters entering the water — and McGuire succeeds at that too. The Waller family are deftly drawn, particularly Wyatt Russell as dad Ray. He’s a man who’s already drowning before he steps foot in the pool: wary of what his future will look like while his MS symptoms worsen, not ready to settle into full-on family life, keen to continue his career as a rising baseball star while his body says otherwise. And Kerry Condon brings considerable empathy as matriarch Eve, torn between the undeniable progress Ray is making with his water therapy and the ghostly visions she’s experienced in the pool. It’s a simple but well-established character dynamic that corresponds neatly to the supernatural shenanigans — every time Ray, Eve or their kids Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren) enter the water, you’ll be holding your breath.
Night Swim glides along with such confidence that the moments it threatens to sink feel all the more glaring. A final-act detour to explain the reasons behind the ghostly goings-on is unnecessary, with a boggy mythology and scares that aren’t a patch on any of the pool action. And the strength of the family story is fumbled in a misjudged ending, with an unearned swing towards darkness that leaves a bitter aftertaste.
But it says a lot that the rest of the film buoys those third-act missteps — for the most part, Night Swim is a strong debut from McGuire that gestures towards IT, The Shining, Jaws and Poltergeist while remaining well-conceived in its own right. It bodes well, too, for future collaborations between Blumhouse and James Wan’s Atomic Monster production company as they prepare to pool their efforts going forward. With smart scares, stylish camerawork, strong sound design (all washed-out underwater sounds, panicked splashing, and nerve-jolting diving-board rattles) and engaging performances, it earns the horror equivalent of a Kellogg’s Rainbow swimming badge.