Horror indies Blumhouse and Atomic Monster merged recently to release Night Swim, a horror feature expanded from a short by writer/director Bryce McGuire. It’s a reasonably spooky tale, and it begins with an interesting premise that starts promisingly but is never fully expanded nor completely satisfying.
In 1992, a girl in her swimming pool experiences a terrifying event. Years later, the Waller family moves into a middle class community and a new home with a beautiful swimming pool fed by a natural spring. This feels like a new start for their dad (Wyatt Russell), who previously suffered from a debilitating injury. While the pool seems to possess healing powers, it also begins to exhibit strange activities and horrific visions, and the Wallers begin to explore the pool’s dark history and its ominous implications. Is the pool haunted or supernatural, and can they save themselves from its curse?
Take the hauntings in films like The Amityville Horror and transfer them to a swimming pool, and this is what you get. The scares come from everyday settings like a pool and things that go bump in the night. The cast, led by Russell and Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), is handicapped by an undeveloped script. There are subplots that aren’t fully explained, and as each family member experiences trauma, there is the feeling of being derivative and familiar (especially after the shocks of films like It). Even the nightmarish images are not too frightening, and when the grand finale arrives, it doesn’t pack a punch as it should.
This film scratches
the surface of moderate scares
where it should have gone all in. Even a PG13 film should produce a lot of terror
and dread. Just remember not to lean too close to the edge of the pool!
***
of ***** stars
No comments:
Post a Comment