By John Corrado

We’ve all heard of haunted houses, but how about a haunted swimming pool? That’s the premise behind the Blumhouse horror movie Night Swim, which introduces us to the unique concept of a family being terrorized by a cursed pool in their new backyard.

The film centres around the Waller family. Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is a former basketball star suffering from multiple sclerosis, who purchases a new home with his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) and their two kids Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren).

The home is meant to be a place for Ray, who was forced into early retirement due to his diagnosis, to relax and adapt to living with MS. But strange things start happening when they clean out and refill the old pool in the backyard, which hasn’t been used in years. And we know that there is something sinister in the water, because it has been foreshadowed in the unsettling opening prologue.

The film is expanded from director and co-writer Bryce McGuire 2014 short film of the same name, and at times Night Swim feels more like a concept in search of a movie. The mythology around the pool isn’t that fleshed out, being introduced in a somewhat rushed way in the last act. McGuire does try to ground this in an emotional family story, and Russell and Condon do their best with the material, but there isn’t quite enough of a compelling narrative here to fill out the feature runtime.

While the concept of a haunted swimming pool might be new, the story beats of Night Swim are mostly predictable. The film mainly relies on jump scares, with hands reaching into things getting grabbed from the other side. Some of these moments are admittedly effective, with the film capitalizing on kids in peril and natural fears of drowning (including from getting trapped falling onto or under a pool cover).

It’s easier to meet the film on its own terms of what McGuire is trying to do, which is to offer a basic throwback to more kid-friendly horror movies like Poltergeist. In keeping with being a throwback, the film also has a more tactile feel to it, with McGuire and crew actually filming underwater and showcasing some creepy prosthetics work and practical effects. For a PG-13 horror movie, Night Swim isn’t a bad choice, and there will be some moments of suspense for budding horror fans. But it’s not quite enough for the film to fully justify itself as the first haunted pool movie.

Film Rating: ★★ (out of 4)

Bonus Features (Blu-ray):

The Blu-ray includes four featurettes and a commentary track. A regular DVD is also included in the set, which ships with a slipcover.

• Masters of Fear (6 minutes, 45 seconds): An overview of the film’s production that finds Russell and Condon talking about working with each other, as McGuire discusses expanding his short and working with producers James Wan and Jason Blum.

• Demons from the Depths (7 minutes, 16 seconds): A look at the impressive, gross-looking prosthetics work on the ghostly creatures in the pool.

• Into the Deep (5 minutes, 50 seconds): A look at approaching making a haunted pool movie, and how the crew met the unique challenges of shooting underwater.

• Marco Polo (4 minutes, 4 seconds): McGuire talks about wanting to define the haunted pool genre before it even begins and “do for pools what Jaws did for the ocean,” as well as crafting the Marco Polo sequence as a centrepiece of the film.

• Feature Commentary with Co-Writer/Director Bryce McGuire

Night Swim is a Universal Pictures Home Entertainment release. It’s 99 minutes and rated 14A.

Street Date: April 9th, 2024