January is considered to be the month where films go to die. It’s the month where studios put their films when they can’t figure out where else to put them. Sometimes awards Contenders get wide releases in January and other times budget horror films get placed here just to see if they can get an audience after the holiday fare. That’s the case with Night Swim the latest low-budget horror film from Blumhouse and James Wan’s production company. After seeing this movie it makes complete sense that it came out in January.

Ray and Eve Waller (Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon) are the parents of a couple of kids, a younger son and a teen daughter. They have moved into a new home in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area due to Ray’s baseball career. He’s recovering from an injury. The new home has a pool which in turn can help him recover from his injury. Soon after living in the house for a few months, the family notices something strange about the pool. That it’s haunted by spirits that they can’t comprehend. 

Despite the film being a horror film it actually uses some autobiographical events to help tell the story. Such as the fact that Wyatt Russell,  the son of Kut Russell and Goldie Hawn, was actually a minor league baseball player who got hurt and then quit the game due to his injury and started his acting career. This was a nice touch to this story by Bryce Maguire, also the director, and Rod Blackhurst. I felt the investment in the film by this element of the story.

As far as the direction goes by Maguire there is a little bit to be desired. The beginning of the story was well thought out and a cold open showing a flashback to 1992 was very informative and gave the movie some depth. The problem is Maguire squandered that goodwill by waiting too long to get into the scarier more thrilling moments of the story. The second act was built up to a climactic third act but that’s what the first act should have been. The second act was a little bit confusing as well.

Besides the confusing and slow-paced second act, the actors, including the kids Izzy and Elliot (Amelie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren) as well as the leads were very good in the film. I truly believed that they were genuinely scared by what was going on in their lives in this movie. Throw in a funny turn from a real estate agent played by Nancy Lenahan and you have a decent cast giving it their all. They elevate this material from pond scum to watchable January fare. 

The thing with most horror films is that they have a twist that gets the audience invested in them and in this particular movie the twist comes too late in the story. Maguire relies on the backstory of the main character and a cold open to suck in the audience but it’s a little too late by the time this twist explains what is truly going on. The explanation is a little too anticlimactic as well which was a bit of a letdown in the end.

Night Swim drowns under its own weight of expectations. The fact that it has a good cast, it’s produced by proven people who have had plenty of success in the past and it has an interesting premise. Like a lot of horror movies the twist doesn’t live up to the expectations of what the filmmaker, Maguire, and writers were trying to accomplish.  The clue on what this film truly was is the fact that Universal Studios released it in the month of January. Where films go to die. 

2 stars

Dan Skip Allen