January is a special time for horror fans. The holidays are over, the new year has only just begun, and the horror options at the box office are as mixed as they have been all year. Some years we get great conversation starters like M3GAN, Missing, or Saint Maud. Other years we suffer because of another Resentment remake. But usually January is a great place for odd little curiosities like Gretel & Hans, Underwateror Infinity pool – films with huge bright spots that are a bit too uneven to be great.
The requirements for something good in January for most horror fans are just that it be interesting and/or entertaining. And despite what some reviews saythe movie 'haunted swimming pool' Night swimming is both. It has a terribly creepy sequence, a truly fascinating family story, some solid jokes, and a thermal spring that is also some kind of ancient god. And if that's not enough for you, it's also strangely enough about baseball as much as it is about night swimming.
Image: Blumhouse/Universal Pictures
The film follows the Waller family as they move into a new home. The father, Ray (a great Wyatt Russell), is a baseball star who suffers from multiple sclerosis but dreams of playing again one day. His wife Eve (Kerry Condon) is more than capable of taking care of things around the house, as Ray's career previously kept him away for days and weeks at a time. And the children, Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren), are desperate to live at a new school for good this time, after years of moving to where their father was trafficked. They hope that they might even be able to play some sports themselves. Moreover, their new house has a magical swimming pool, but that is a revelation for later.
While Night swimming's PG-13 rating ensures that the images never delve too far into the deep end, Bryce McGuire's directorial debut is still quite captivating at times. The opening scene, in which a little girl falls victim to the mysterious pool, is especially terrifying. The girl chases her brother's toy boat around the pool as the lights flicker and shadowy figures appear in the darkness all around her. It's an impressively creepy little set, but it also sets the perfect tone for the film. Night swimmingThe film's best fears are the ones that lie just beyond our view, whether that's at the edge of the pool or at the edges of what the film's characters say and do.
The best example of this, believe it or not, is the movie's baseball subplot. Ray isn't necessarily a bad father, but it's clear that his passion for baseball has left little room in his heart or mind for anything else. He has moved his family constantly, he has been away for much of his children's lives, and he missed his wife at the birth of their first child because he was in the field.
Image: Blumhouse/Universal
The film never suggests what we should do with this information, or whether we should judge him for it, other than making it clear that he did his best. There is no doubt that he loves his children and his wife, but his love for them fills the gaps of the passion he has built his life around, not the other way around. It's a profoundly silent tragedy for a horror-comedy about a killer swimming pool, but the silliness surrounding Ray's situation is what makes it so hard and ties into the pool situation so beautifully.
(Ed. remark: The rest of this review contains lore and theme spoilers for Night swimming.)
The pool in the Wallers' new backyard is, it turns out, connected to a magical spring that people worshiped thousands of years ago. Spring would grant his followers their greatest desire, but in return they had to sacrifice a life at the pool. Ancient people understood this and used it consciously, but the modern world is generally less aware of supernatural costs.
Ray never knows the rules of the magic pool, or why it suddenly starts curing his MS. He just knows he's getting stronger and his physical therapy in the pool is helping him heal. So when the pool starts to pose a danger to his children, he barely notices. After all, he gets what he wants.
The only time Night swimming chooses to make his metaphors louder than this when Eve confronts the house's previous owner (and the pool's previous user), an older woman who can't help but constantly brag about her son. He was a wonderful boy who spent his childhood sickly, she says, but after their stay in the house he magically recovered and has turned into an impressive young man. When Eve confronts the former owner about whether she ever had a daughter, the woman finally speaks up Night swimming's pitch-black fear saying out loud, “It's better this way.” She didn't mind sacrificing her daughter for her son.
Image: Blumhouse/Universal Pictures
It's a fantastically bleak scene, aided by clever make-up effects and disgusting-looking black water, and it elegantly captures the film's fear. It's the book version of The shiningbroken by the shallow side of culture: what if a parent's personal desires outweigh their love for their children? Night swimming explores the point where Ray is ultimately willing to stop putting his passion for baseball above his family, even if he doesn't realize how he's doing so.
That's a fascinating question that the film's finale can't quite live up to: it trades its fantastical subtlety in favor of a Treacherous-like journey through a spirit world. But the fact that the film raises questions about priorities and parenting at all is enough to elevate the film beyond its seemingly silly premise. During most of the duration Night swimming is a much deeper and sharper look at silent familial dysfunction than most films where that is their entire focus.
For all the strengths of the family story, it's probably fair to get a little more horror out of a movie about a killer swimming pool. There are some nice bits of pool horror in there Night swimming, like seeing another world behind the lid of the skimmer or the spring of an empty diving board that plays like a warning sign to run away. But outside of the opening scene Night swimming is not the scariest movie about hungry ghosts and old gods. Anyway, it's January. Horror fans will take what we can get. Sometimes that just means a few big scares in an otherwise fascinating family movie about magical swimming pools and baseball – which is more than enough to Night swimming a worthy addition to the list of interesting, watchable January horror.
Night swimming currently playing in theaters.