Night Swim isn’t the worst horror movie on HBO Max, but it’s one of the least compelling. It bears all the terrible wounds of a decent short film being stretched to feature length. A concept that can carry ten minutes needs to grow quite a bit to accommodate 98. That’s not to say that Night Swim just does the 2014 short film of the same name over and over. Instead, it fills in the cracks with ideas that other horror movies already did better.
Night Swim Washes Up on HBO Max’s Top Ten
Night Swim is a horror movie about a haunted swimming pool. That’s not a great premise, but there’s something funny about it. I immediately think of all the awful no-budget horror films on services like Tubi, but this one cost $15 million. Evil Dead Rise cost around the same amount, and I think there’s a lesson in that. The plot of Night Swim follows the Waller family. Kurt Russell’s Ray was a pro baseball player before multiple sclerosis ended his career. He and his wife, Kerry Condon’s Eve, get a pool as both a treat and a method of therapy. Their symbol of middle-class success quickly turns against them as it turns out the water is haunted. Are there themes that the film could explore to deepen the narrative and add meaning? Absolutely. Unfortunately, the film can only occasionally slip on the wet concrete and land near them.
Like a lot of Blumhouse movies, Night Swim made a fairly impressive haul at the box office. Its $15 million investment yielded just under $60 million from viewers. Jason Blum and James Wan got involved in this one, but neither of them guarantees any seal of quality. Blumhouse puts out enough material to cover the entire spectrum of quality. This isn’t even the worst they have to offer, but that’s barely a compliment. The worst Blumhouse projects are hilarious, but Night Swim rarely engenders a chuckle. It’s dull, half-hearted, and meaningless. It takes bits and pieces from The Shining, Poltergeist, and every horror movie set in the water, but it doesn’t understand what made them work. The most interesting thing about the film is the premise. I can imagine a sitcom character excitedly defying curfew to see it.
I often like to appreciate the unsung artists who put good work into bad projects. The most fascinating work on this project is the underwater photography. Surely a film about a haunted swimming pool couldn’t fake the water shots, but that’s a huge logistical challenge. Ian S. Takahashi is one of Hollywood’s finest underwater cinematographers. His aquatic work appears in The Suicide Squad, Ahsoka, and the upcoming epic Megalopolis. Night Swim is still a bad movie, but at least they hired the best camera-savvy merman in the business.
