Starring: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 98 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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A woman swimming in her pool at night is terrorised by an evil spirit.
In more recent times, there have been a number of ‘horror films’ which are more widely accessible to a drama friendly audience. These are not horror films in the sense of blood and gore, the type popular at horror festivals. Rather, the new films are films of menace, haunting, often with what might be called PG characters. They can play well to a more family-oriented audience but are denounced as too tame by the gore aficionados.
In Night Swim we are introduced to the touch of menace immediately, a little girl with her invalid brother, a toy floating in their pool, her deciding to retrieve it, but her then being dragged into the pool and disappearing.
What follows is, in many ways, the kind of plot we might have anticipated. A family, the father a baseball champion but debilitated and recuperating, a supportive mother who works in school administration, an older daughter, a younger son, deciding to settle down and buy a house. Of course, they are attracted by the house and the pool. So, we really know what is going to happen but the tantalising aspect of the film is how it will happen.
Audiences will be attracted by this pleasantly average American family, the father played by Wyatt Russell and the mother played by the Irish actress, Kerry Condon (Banshees of Innisfail). There are scenes with the doctor and hope of recuperation, there are scenes of swimming and the father getting better, there is exaltation in having the pool.
There is a happy sequence where the father takes his son to a baseball practice, the mother encouraging the somewhat timid son to hit the ball – and he does. But, the crowd persuades the father to demonstrate his past progress and he certainly smashes the ball. Happiness all round.
So, what better than to have a party, to invite everyone from the school, the neighbours, a welcoming party. But, of course, the haunting strikes, everyone afraid, leaving, denouncing the family.
There are some complications, of course, the mother seeking out the owner of the previous house to get the story and learning of a strange mythology of the powers of water, the healing power but there always demanding a human sacrifice, giving up the weakest member of the family. Which leads them to a dramatic underwater climax of family confrontation – with some saved, and a sacrifice made for the sake of others.
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