Night Swim

I went into this film with expectations at an exceptionally low tide, having seen many critic and user reviews laughing about the "haunted swimming pool" idea. As I sat down to watch, beer in hand (a must for this film, honestly), I expected it to be downright awful, and to find myself yelling to many a character, "JUST DONT GO IN THE POOL!?!?" To my honest surprise, while this movie is absolutely kooky (I can only assume its writers were high AF when they came up with the idea), and not at all scary, everyone did the best with the material they had, and when the story went *deeper* to add more to the haunted pool idea, I actually was pretty pleased with how everything eventually came to the surface. I'm a horror fan-and a comedy fan-and this is kind of in the middle of both. It's a mindless way to pass the evening (as I said, drinks are highly recommended), but while it may not float your boat, it's not the worst way to spend your time. Go in it with no to low expectations, and maybe you'll be surprised.

The reviews make this movie look like a disappointment, however, it's par for the course for a horror movie. The acting is pretty good, the plot is very intriguing, and the only failure is the effects. The monster is not consistent, it looks different literally every time we see it, and the effects are Ghostbusters level, or maybe worse actually. Like, clearly animated. But otherwise it's a pretty good movie and actually gave me the heebie jeebies once or twice. The script is intriguing enough with one scene that is a little cringey (feat. Old woman) but what else can we expect from a horror movie? Worth the watch.

This film was bland. Can't say it was bad, can only say it was not worth it.

I like Wyatt Russell, what's not to like, he's the son of Kurt Russell, that's a lot to like. He heads up a movie with a long subplot about an ex-baseball player, for whom baseball is everything until an illness takes him out of the game forcing him to get to know his family better.

It would have been a nice family drama if the (lack of) horror did not get in the way.

This was not scary, not frightening, nothing got me excited, not enough star power in the film to look at to make it worth looking at.

I'm very surprised this made it into theatres instead of premiering on Hulu or Shudder.

I can only say wait for it to come out on one of these streaming channels cause it's a waste of money otherwise.

The story is bland, predictable and often boring. They rely too heavily on cheap jumpscares. Almost walked out of the theatre midway through to go do something more exciting like cleaning the bathroom. Pacing was fine, I guess, but everything was rather boring overall. The characters all have extremely convenient backstory's and skills and they aren't very complex.

The soundtrack was fine and there were some interesting shots. Acting was okay as well but nothing spectacular.

This movie falls into the type of horror movie that sits in purgatory in my "continue watching" list on Netflix.

Overall 3/10.

You can tell when a scary scene's coming, which made it suck for me because the build ups weren't great. The actors seemed to put effort into making it engaging, but their efforts only went so far.

This horror movie revolves around a swimming pool. After the first frightful event occurred, everything felt like a stretch. It feels more suited to being a short film, but even then it could've been drawn out better. The concept seems derivative, reminiscent of horror movies that have already been done before. A supernatural entity grants wishes but at a cost, a trope seen not only in horror but in other film genres. The only deviation here is that instead of a magical bean or demonic entity, it's a swimming pool.

They should have trimmed down the family-focused moments and delved deeper into the pool's eldritch origins. I anticipated an exploration of its history, envisioning a showcase of people worshipping it, perhaps rooted in Native American mythology and folklore. And the monsters sucked, looked like copses from a cop show, there could have been more imaginative entities. For instance, a tale about an evil witch who once granted wishes, was drowned in the springs, and now her soul resides there. Something. Anything!

It's frustrating when horror movies fail to be scary, that's bare minimum expectation. Dictionary definition of the genre. This story should have been crafted to instill genuine fear of swimming pools. There was immense potential left untapped.

The monsters weren't scary. The ending wasn't all that. 'something has you, you need to fight it' is so overused, it's fine if the movie is decent but when the movies boring, it doesn't work. This movie is 90min but like a never-ending 3-hour ordeal. It's more of a family drama than a horror movie. It's like the director crafted a drama centered around a family coping with a superstar dad grappling with an MS diagnosis, but then studio said no, make it a horror. And it's terrible at that.