91 min listen
Night Swim Review
ratings:
Length:
114 minutes
Released:
Jan 10, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Synopsis
When Kurt Russell's son is forced into retirement from the MLB, he and his family move to a new house with a pool. The pool ends up being a death trap for his family and the neighborhood. But not in the normal way, this pool is extra scary because… that’s right there’s no gate! But actually it gets worse, the pool is also haunted or something.
Review of Night Swim
Night Swim is produced by Jason Blumhouse, and like most of his horror movies, this one stays in the shallow end of the pool. The main features of Night Swim are recycled tropes from much better horror movies. You’ll recognise borderline theft of the IT sewer scene, and the father descending into madness ala The Shining and Amityville Horror.
It is an interesting concept to set a horror movie around a haunted pool. It taps into some latent fears about pools and deep water in general, but this movie definitely doesn’t crack the code and come up with a convincing premise. The ideas all seem half baked and made up as they went along. Is it a ghost? Are there many ghosts haunting the pool? Is the water an entity in itself? Is it a monkey's paw? Sure yeah, whatever.
So really the main thing that the film suffers from is a lack of commitment. There are many interesting ways you could go with it. Personally, I would have made the pool be haunted by the ghost of Marco Polo, and gone full horror comedy.
The dialogue is also pretty on the nose at times, and feels like a paint by numbers script.
There aren’t really any standout performances, but Kerry Condon as the mother is probably the most compelling and believable out of the cast.
It’s not a terrible movie, but is very predictable and as MAx and Sydney would call it, “mid”.
Score
5/10
When Kurt Russell's son is forced into retirement from the MLB, he and his family move to a new house with a pool. The pool ends up being a death trap for his family and the neighborhood. But not in the normal way, this pool is extra scary because… that’s right there’s no gate! But actually it gets worse, the pool is also haunted or something.
Review of Night Swim
Night Swim is produced by Jason Blumhouse, and like most of his horror movies, this one stays in the shallow end of the pool. The main features of Night Swim are recycled tropes from much better horror movies. You’ll recognise borderline theft of the IT sewer scene, and the father descending into madness ala The Shining and Amityville Horror.
It is an interesting concept to set a horror movie around a haunted pool. It taps into some latent fears about pools and deep water in general, but this movie definitely doesn’t crack the code and come up with a convincing premise. The ideas all seem half baked and made up as they went along. Is it a ghost? Are there many ghosts haunting the pool? Is the water an entity in itself? Is it a monkey's paw? Sure yeah, whatever.
So really the main thing that the film suffers from is a lack of commitment. There are many interesting ways you could go with it. Personally, I would have made the pool be haunted by the ghost of Marco Polo, and gone full horror comedy.
The dialogue is also pretty on the nose at times, and feels like a paint by numbers script.
There aren’t really any standout performances, but Kerry Condon as the mother is probably the most compelling and believable out of the cast.
It’s not a terrible movie, but is very predictable and as MAx and Sydney would call it, “mid”.
Score
5/10
Released:
Jan 10, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Us Movie Review: We went and saw Us, and while it was an incredibly solid horror movie, it did not live up to the hype. Yes, it had good social commentary and implications. Yes, it is by one of the most respected (if only because of his single debut horror movie, by Horror Movie Talk