James Swift: Swift @ The Movies: 'Night Swim' sinks

James Swift, The Daily Citizen, Dalton, Ga.
·3 min read

Jan. 12—There are a lot of haunted house movies out there. You know, "The Amityville Horror" and "Poltergeist" and stuff like that.

Well, "Night Swim" might just be the first "semi-haunted house" movie ever made. The family in this flick doesn't have to worry about ALL of their domicile being disturbed by ghosts, just the swimming pool out back.

Now, that seems like it wouldn't be THAT big of a problem. Haunted pool you say? They sell 50-foot tarps down at Walmart for $20. The movie seems like it ought to be over in about five minutes.

But then I remembered something. If you want to get supernatural forces off your property, what's been the traditional spooky movie solution? That's right, you call up a Catholic priest and ask 'em to sprinkle holy water all over the carpet. And therein lies the secret brilliance of "Night Swim." What are you supposed to use on UNHOLY water?

And rest assured, the haunted H20 in this movie is E-V-I-L with a capital "E" and probably a capital "V," too.

You might be wondering how the producers make this concept work. Well, it's a bit more nuanced and complicated than you may think.

Let's start with the family that moves into the house with the haunted swimming pool. The father figure is a former third baseman who used to play for the Milwaukee Brewers 'til he hurt his hand. And wouldn't you know it, one of the things his physical therapists suggest he does is ... aquatic exercises.

Like all supernatural hokum of the sort, it takes a while for the plot to get rolling here. At first, it seems like the swimming pool is something like a fountain of youth, because after doing a few laps in it our baseball playing daddy starts to see some improvements to his throwing arm.

But you know that ain't going to last. Especially when his son starts tossing quarters in the chlorine filter and he starts hearing these weird voices coming out of the drain.

I don't care what kind of movie you're in. If complete sentences start coming out of anything with a motor, it's time for you to high-tail it out of there and ask for your security deposit back.

Naturally, we wouldn't have much of a movie if these people had some gumption. So we get a lot of background about the former tenants of the house, and as it turns out, the perpetually cheery realtor who sold 'em the house conveniently glossed over the series of mysterious fatalities that have occurred there over the years.

I don't know — do you think the 8-year-old zombie girl swimming around in the drain pipes might have something to do with it?

The movie starts off strong, but I reckon the limitations of the source material are pretty apparent. For example, despite the title, most of the scenes take place in broad daylight. Apparently, it's a lot harder making water show up on the screen when everything is pitch black.

And in the final act — without giving away too much of the story here — let's just say they give up on the whole "evil swimming pool" gimmick altogether and turn this into a more routine, run of the mill monster movie outing. I'm not saying it doesn't work, per se, but I couldn't help but feel like we got the old bait and switch here.

There's one or two good scenes, I suppose, but by and large, there just ain't enough here to keep the movie afloat.

The best I can afford "Night Swim" is a ho-hum TWO PIECES OF POPCORN OUT OF FOUR rating. Hopefully, this thing'll spawn an entire franchise — personally, I can't wait for the inevitable sequel about a killer Jacuzzi.