‘Night Swim’ Review: Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon Tread Water in This Bland, Diluted Horror Tale

The first theatrical release of the year is like an Arby’s with a “C” health inspection rating: It might not make you nauseous, but if it does you can’t say there wasn’t a clearly posted warning sign.

This year’s sacrificial film is “Night Swim,” a horror movie about a haunted swimming pool. It’s the kind of premise that sells itself. Not because it’s good, mind you, but because somehow, after films like “Death Bed: The Bed That Eats” and “Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes” (which is about a haunted lamp — I’m not making that up) it doesn’t seem to have been done before.

The genius, or possibly the opposite, of “Night Swim” is that writer/director Bryce McGuire takes this ridiculous premise very seriously. There are moments of pure camp and it’s possible some of them are intentional, but between them we’re expected to have a deep well of feeling for these characters who are trapped in a comical universe where their swimming pool is evil.

Wyatt Russell (“The Woman in the Window”) and Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) play Ray and Eve Waller. He’s a former third baseman for the Brewers whose career got cut short when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She works at a nearby school but that’s not nearly as relevant to the plot.

They’re shopping for a new house with their kids. Ray always wanted a pool but Eve says she thought pools were scary, even though later in the film she reveals she was born into a Navy family and is an experienced diver. In any case, they buy the pool because Ray needs low impact exercise for his physical therapy and because, when he accidentally fell in the pool, he had a magic vision of playing baseball again.

So it goes that Eve and their two kids, Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle, “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”) and Elliot (Gavin Warren, “Fear the Walking Dead”) have harrowing experiences in the pool, seeing ghosts and getting pulled under the water, while Ray’s life improves dramatically. Before long, his symptoms are disappearing and his doctor stares in disbelief at the test results that tells him his MS is miraculously healing itself. Ray just smiles and says, “We have a pool!”

Russell and Condon are drowning in these thankless roles. He’s a low-rent Jack Torrance, gradually going evil thanks to his contact with a supernatural whatsit. She’s investigating the film’s backstory by interrogating their real estate agent, who apologizes for not mentioning the “evil pool” thing, as well as the previous tenant. Russell gets all the laugh lines, whether they’re intentional or not, and Condon gets to look serious and worried. It’s not the best illustration of their talents.

The one actor who does completely break out of “Night Swim” is Ben Sinclair, in the coveted role of “Pool Tech.” The Wallers ask this guy to take a look at their pool to see if it needs maintenance and he unleashes a monologue about how mankind crawled out of the water and has been afraid to go back ever since. You can’t imagine that a film would introduce this wonderful a character and not bring him back later to save the day by replacing the filter while ghosts attack him or something. Sadly, he never returns.

Indeed, for a film about a haunted swimming pool, which is under a strict mandate to come up with as many pool gags as possible, “Night Swim” teases a lot of scares that never come to fruition. Throughout the whole movie there’s a giant pink inflatable flamingo either in the water or right next to it, attracting the audience’s attention. It’s like the clown doll from “Poltergeist” except it’s fifteen times larger and hot pink. It’s practically begging to come alive and kill somebody. Instead, nothing. I guess, sometimes a giant pink inflatable flamingo is just a giant pink inflatable flamingo.

The horrors don’t always happen at night, though, and they don’t always happen while you’re swimming. But, to be fair to whoever came up with the title, “Deadpool” was taken. At least it looks ominous. Cinematographer Charlie Sarnoff (“Smile”) knows how to make a swimming pool look vast and looming, even though he’s also tasked with baffling shots like a P.O.V. of somebody with their eyes closed while they’re playing Marco Polo. We can clearly see everything through their eyelashes, even when scene is all about how they can’t see anything. So, either nothing about that makes sense or, best case scenario, they’re cheating at Marco Polo and forgot that their boyfriend doesn’t look like a ghost.

“Night Swim” is utter nonsense, but it’s impossible to be mad at it. The silly premise and the sincere performances and the laughable dialogue nearly combine to make a kitschy treat in the vein of “Death Spa” and “Slaxx.” It just never goes far enough with its ridiculousness to reach pure entertainment, and it certainly can’t be taken seriously enough to justify its melodrama. Sometimes it sinks, sometimes it swims, but mostly it just treads water.

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