DISCLAIMER: This review contains affiliate links. Clicking on any of the images below will take you to either Play-Asia, J-List or 365 Games for your consideration.
Clicking on these shopping links below and buying an item supports my work and keeps it free for everyone! Thank you for your support:
Mighty Ape: Games, books, movies, toys, music and more! A huge range of products at great prices and quick shipping. I’ve been using them for over a decade and can’t recommend them highly enough!
It was bound to happen. We’ve pretty much had killer everything movies, now we finally have a killer swimming pool.
80’s America would have had a lot of fun with this concept. Nude girls, killer pool cleaner, blood water and hands popping out of the pool filters - it would have been glorious, hilarious and memorable.
But modern America doesn’t to make movies like that. Instead, we get bland, unexplained and predictable. An ending that ends up being ridiculous as it tries to explain why things have happened to our hapless cast of admittedly decent characters.
PLOT
The Waller family is looking for a new place to live and falls in love with a massive home that features an awesome outdoor swimming pool. The father is a retired baseball star recovering from an illness and the pool appears to have a healing property that speeds up his recovery.
However, while the father is enjoying the benefits of the house’s pool, his family begin to encounter shadowy figures and other creepy experiences when they use it.
ABOUT THE FILM
What I am trying to work out is why are there so many Australian references in this movie? I assume its James Wan adding a bit of his personality to the production.
For reference, some of the music and the use of the Harold Holt is what I specifically mean. For those who don’t know, Harold Holt was an Australian prime minister who drowned, his body was never recovered.
But that’s about as interesting as the film got for me. Well that and perhaps the first 40 minutes. Admittedly, the opening scene was nice and creepy with the little girl, and her cameo later on the movie gave me Poltergeist vibes, and some of the other pool sequences such as the daughter and her boyfriend were also well crafted, but I can’t help but feel that something was missing.
That something was a reason to care. The family is nice and all, surprisingly too nice for an American horror movie, but the father reeked of selfishness and I couldn’t feel sorry for the mother at any stage during the film.
Then the films ham-fisted and comical way of trying to explain the ending - while completely ignoring the plight of the family cat - and then just ends.
Wham, bam, there’s your long-awaited movie about a killer swimming pool. Better luck next time I suppose.
What are my overall thoughts?
Your mileage, or kilometerage, with this movie may vary, but it was pretty clear to me - this one is a bit of stinker. I’d actually rather watch the horrendously terrible Chinese film Who In The Pool again over watching this.
Watch this only if you’re too young for something good.
For your consideration: Clicking on these shopping links below and buying an item supports my work and keeps it free for everyone! Thank you for your support:
J-LIST: For Japanese pop culture items, including games, movies and adult products. Beware of NSFW content.
365 Games: Direct from the UK! Get great deals on the latest games, music, movies, toys, clothes and more!
Play-Asia: For the latest games, movies, figures, books, lifestyle products and other cool stuff direct from Asia! Great prices and low shipping.
Mighty Ape: Games, books, movies, toys, music and more! A huge range of products at great prices and quick shipping. I’ve been using them for over a decade and can’t recommend them highly enough!
Genre Horror Thriller
Director Bryce McGuire
Starring Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amelie Hoeferle
Original Title Night Swim
Country of Origin USA
Release Date 5 January 2024
night swim horror movie review swimming pool 2024 movie review USA