Night Swim Movie Review

“Night Swim” is a tight, tense little movie that asks a question: If a Wishing Well could grant you a fabulous wish, would you want the results if there was a terrible cost to be paid? What if the ‘Wishing Well’ was in your own backyard? What if it the ‘Well’ was — as Jethro Bodine might say — a ‘Cee-ment Pond’?

Ray Waller (played by Wyatt Russell) is a Major League player who has had to put aside his life passion. He has been stricken with MS, and he is slowly losing his strength. With his wife Eve Waller (played by Kerry Condon), they try and find a place to live. They have two children, Izzy (played by Amélie Hoeferle) — a mid-teen girl — and a younger boy named Elliot (played by Gavin Warren).

They find a place that is for sale, and it is in a nice suburb of the Twin Cities area. They are tired of renting. When Ray was active in the MLB clubs, they had gotten used to moving every few years — after Ray got traded from club to club. Now Ray wants to find a place to heal and get better.

They find a nice little house for the family. This one even has a backyard swimming pool. This pool is unique, because the water comes from a natural spring-fed source. The water is naturally warm and has some healing qualities. Ray is on board for this house, and he convinces Eve that it can help him.

Of course, there was nothing said about the history of this house and the pool when it was sold to the Waller family. The prior owner of the house had a young daughter who had drowned in the pool back in the early 90’s. Then going back even further, there was small ‘healing resort’ on the site. It featured the ‘healing waters’ of a spring-fed pond. Until some of the visitors drowned…

Then one night, the family cat goes missing. The cat collar is found floating in the pool. Eve takes a plunge into the pool one night. Mysterious things begin to happen. Izzy invites a young guy over to the house. They start to swim at night. Izzy sees some scary things, and finds that this pool also has an ‘underwater sunken place’.

Elliot tells Izzy that he knows she has seen something. He claims to have had a conversation with the girl who had drowned back in the 90’s, and she was looking for a way to get out. Every time that something bad is about to happen in the pool, there is a small motorized toy boat that shows up.

But of course, Ray Waller has gotten much better since using the pool. His strength seems to be coming back, and his outlook for the future is improving. He thinks that he might be able to get well enough to get back to the Major Leagues. He does not see how his wish coming true might have a devastating impact on his family.

After a friendly pool party goes very badly, Eve knows that this is the time to ‘Get Out’. This backyard oasis has its own ‘underwater sunken place’. There is no way to know how it will affect the family. But the odds do not look good. Elliot is afraid of the pool and what might happen. They have never found the missing cat.

But when they all try and leave the house, Ray gets deathly ill in the car. And that is just backing out of the driveway. They all go back inside, and Eve goes off to meet up with the previous owner of the house. There seems to be something evil that is in possession of Ray, driving him to return to the pool.

Eve finds out some disturbing facts and rushes home. Izzy and Elliot are faced with some deadly choices. When Eve gets back home, she has found Ray has ‘gone off the deep end’. For one person to get their wish, another person has to be sacrificed. Elliot is sinking down fast, and Izzy is fighting off a Major League demon. Eve comes to a point where she sees a sacrifice must be made. But who will it be?

“Night Swim” is a movie that keeps all of the major scares in the shallow end of the pool. There is a nice setup for the evil, dark waters in a haunted pool. There is a terrified family stuck with a pool from out of the end of ‘Poltergeist’.  There is the effective, if borrowed imagery from ‘Get Out’, of the ‘underwater sunken place’ in the depths of the pool.

Wyatt Russell does a very decent job playing a guy who really wants to return to his former glory. Kerry Condon is convincing as the wife who wants to support her husband in getting his health back to normal, but not at the expense of the kids. Amélie Hoeferle (Izzy) and Gavin Warren (Elliot) also turn in very good performances.

In a couple of places, there are a few decent ‘jump scare’ moments. You will never want to play ‘Marco Polo’ in the pool again. The movie teeters a bit when reaching for an explanation for all the supernatural evil occurrences. This movie does not go heavy in blood and gore, to keep that PG-13 rating. The spooky atmosphere is enhanced by the soundtrack/score and the editing.

“Night Swim” is a tightly-knit supernatural horror movie, but without going too heavy into the horror. When Evil lurks at the bottom of the pool, can this movie keep its head above water?