‘Night Swim’ Review: Familiar But Satisfying Dive Into Fear

Before “Night Swim” expands beyond its gimmick: the pool is haunted! -and she starts pruning, she sounds like the best “dollar baby” ever created. Dollar Babies, for those who don’t know, are movies derived from Stephen King short stories that the best-selling author allowed film students and promising dreamers to adapt for the mere price of $1. (It recently discontinued the program.)

“Night Swim,” the confident feature debut from director Bryce McGuire (who shares credit with Rod Blackhurst), is not King’s creation. But it has all the classic hallmarks and virtues of the horror master’s tightest riffs: credible middle-class Americans hosting backyard barbecues and playing sports, dealing with the supernatural, whose pop culture distractions disappear in the presence of something inexplicable. The film, highly reminiscent of King, cultivates a strong undercurrent of economic status jumping. As a character humbly boasts, “We have a pool,” and the camera zooms in on smiling eyes.

That’s Ray Waller (a lanky, perfectly cast Wyatt Russell), until recently a hard-hitting third baseman for the Brewers who just received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and is already giving off a sad loser stench. But his devoted wife, Eve (Kerry Condon), sees an opportunity for rekindling, and as they and their two children settle into their new suburban home, spirits are improving. Ray’s doctor, unsparing in his honesty, recommends water therapy.

We’ve already seen what the Waller pool can do in a PG-13 but impressively tense prologue set in 1992, night lights fluttering, the drain emitting a dark cloud of goo, a girl devoured. This new family doesn’t know any of that, but their house cat, Cider, is already feeling lost. Plus, Ray seems to be on the mend, doing ferocious laps after midnight and training for a second chance on the playing field or a decent shot at becoming the Nicholsonian patriarch of his own version of “The Shining.”

McGuire, who provided proof of this concept with a 2014 short film, knows exactly what he’s doing, scene after scene, especially when it comes to the deliciously sadistic grammar of suspense. He turns the casual slice of a watermelon into a seat-squirming test, the same as a teenage round of Marco Polo (with an uninvited guest), and he knows we’re most vulnerable right after a big laugh. You’re even willing to forgive McGuire some of the sillier lines in the script (“There’s something wrong with that pool…”) because the pacing and craftsmanship is so tight.

There’s no point in comparing these deep underwater shots to “Jaws” or, more aptly, “Poltergeist,” the Spielberg-produced house of horrors, neither of which can be bettered. Still, the ambition here is exhilarating, and during its most exciting stretches, “Night Swim” seems to be getting it right, until it suddenly isn’t, falling victim to over-plotting, to pushing the water too hard. (There’s plenty of room in the pool, but enough for mystical spring pools, an ancient curse, and parental guilt?)

It won’t be the first horror movie that fails to get things right. Even King struggles with it. But how beautiful that January has become a month in which a smart studio like Blumhouse (last year “M3gan” was also theirs) can come in and remind us that, from time to time, the old house is not broken and does not require repair. Maybe just a pool cleaner.