‘Night Swim’ Drowns In Boredom

Night Swim is one of those typical Blumhouse horror movies that is released in the month of January that people have forgotten about by the time the Super Bowl rolls around. It’s boring and has a tedious pace typical of something that started out as a short movie concept that the filmmakers were given more money to expand on. However, they couldn’t in this case. So, they just thought if they load the movie down with more family drama, no one would notice.

Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) sleep-walks through a role as a major league baseball player who has to retire due to an illness. They choose a more permanent house with a pool in the back to help. However, we learn in the prologue something sinister happened. As it always does in these movies. Kerry Condon plays Ray’s wife, Eva, who notices Ray changes while Ray seems to act like everything is fine. But we all know everything is not fine.

Director Bryce McGuire and co-writer Rod Blackhurst adapted this from a short movie they made about a decade ago. The idea is actually impressive that the pool gets its water from a natural spring that was believed to be a healing spring. However, as Ray’s health improves, the spring requires a sacrifice. And apparently the obligatory animal pet death isn’t enough. Yep, this is another stupid horror movie where the cat or dog notices something is strange from the beginning and eventually turns up missing and presumably dead.

If the dog could survive in the original Amityville Horror and even help, then other pets can survive. The movie isn’t dark enough to necessitate such an action. This is just another cliched movie with lame plot points you’ve seen time and time again. Ray and Eva host a pool party and BBQ only to have something go wrong as it usually does. It would’ve been better if we couldn’t see that Russell and Condon are actually bored by the dialogue they have to say.

Don’t waste your time with the hour and a half of watching this movie as I’m not going to waste anymore of my time writing this blog.

What do you think? Please comment.