Night Swim is a pretty good horror movie and an even better family drama

January is a special time for horror fans. The holidays are over, the new year is just beginning, and the horror offerings at the box office are as mixed as they’ve been all year. Some years we get great conversation starters like M3GAN, Miss, or Saint Maud. In other years we suffer from others Resentment New edition. But mostly January is a great place for strange little oddities like Gretel and Hansel, Underwateror Infinity pool – Films with enormous bright spots that are a little too uneven to be great.

The requirements for something good in January for most horror fans are simply that it be interesting and/or entertaining. And nevertheless what some reviews saythe movie “Haunted Swimming Pool.” Night swimming is both. There’s an incredibly creepy sequence, a really fascinating family story, some good jokes, and a hot spring that’s also some sort of ancient god. And if that’s still not enough for you, strangely enough, it’s as much about baseball as it is about late-night swimming.

The film follows the Waller family as they move into a new house. The father, Ray (a great Wyatt Russell), is a baseball star who suffers from multiple sclerosis but dreams of one day playing again. His wife Eve (Kerry Condon) is perfectly capable of taking care of things around the house, as Ray’s career previously kept him away for days and weeks. And this time the children Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren) are desperate to finally settle into a new school after years of moving to where their father moved. They hope that they might even be able to exercise themselves. Plus, their new house has a magical swimming pool – but that’s a revelation for later.

While Night swimmingAlthough Bryce McGuire’s directorial debut ensures that the imagery never goes too deep despite the PG-13 rating, it’s still quite haunting at times. The opening scene, in which a little girl falls victim to the mysterious pool, is particularly frightening. The girl chases her brother’s toy boat around the pool as its lights flicker and shadowy figures appear in the darkness around her. It’s an impressively creepy little set piece, but it also sets the perfect tone for the film. Night swimmingThe greatest moments of terror lurk just outside of what we can see, be it at the edge of the pool or at the edge of what the film’s characters say and do.

The best example of this, believe it or not, is the film’s baseball subplot. Ray isn’t necessarily a bad father, but it’s clear that his passion for baseball left little room in his heart and head for anything else. He moved his family constantly, he was away for large parts of his children’s lives, and he missed his wife giving birth to their first child because he was in the fields.

The film never suggests what we should do with this information or whether we should judge him for it, aside from making it clear that he did his best. There is no question that he loves his children and his wife, but his love for them fills the gaps of passion around which he has built his life, rather than the other way around. For a horror-comedy about a killer pool, it’s a deeply quiet kind of tragedy, but the silliness of Ray’s situation is what makes it so poignant and makes it tie into the pool situation so well.

[Ed. note: The rest of this review contains lore and theme spoilers for Night Swim.]

As it turns out, the pool in the Wallers’ new backyard is connected to a magical spring that people worshiped thousands of years ago. The spring would grant its followers their greatest wish, but in return they would have to sacrifice a life to the pool. Ancient people figured this out and used it consciously, but the modern world tends to be less aware of the supernatural costs.

Ray never knows the rules of the magic pool or why he suddenly starts curing his MS. He just knows that he is getting stronger and that his physical therapy in the pool is helping him heal. When the pool poses a danger to his children, he barely notices. He finally gets what he wants.

The only time Night swimming decides to make his metaphors louder when Eve confronts the previous owner of the house (and previous user of the pool), an older woman who can’t help but constantly brag about her son. He was a wonderful boy who spent his childhood sickly, she says, but after her stay in the house he magically recovered and became an impressive young man. When Eve confronts the former owner with the question of whether she ever had a daughter, the woman finally speaks out Night swimming‘s pitch-black fear out loud, effectively saying, “This is better.” She didn’t mind sacrificing her daughter for her son.

It’s a fantastically dark scene, aided by clever make-up effects and disgusting-looking black water, and it elegantly conveys the film’s fear. It’s the book version of The glowrefracted by the superficial end of culture: What if parents’ personal desires outweighed their love for their children? Night swimming explores the point at which Ray is finally ready to stop choosing his passion for baseball over his family, even if he’s not clear how he does it.

It’s an intriguing question that the film’s set-piece finale can’t quite live up to: it trades its fantastical subtlety for one Insidious-like journey through a spirit world. But the fact that the film raises questions about priorities and parenting in general is enough to elevate it beyond its seemingly silly premise. Most of its running time Night swimming is a much deeper and more incisive look at quiet family dysfunction than most films that focus solely on it.

Aside from all the strengths of its family story, it’s probably fair to want a little more horror from a movie about a killer swimming pool. There are some fun parts of pool horror Night swimming, like seeing another world behind the skimmer door or the spring of an empty diving board playing like a warning signal to run. Outside of the opening scene, however Night swimming isn’t the scariest movie about hungry ghosts and old gods. But hey, it’s January. Horror fans will take what we can get. Sometimes that just means a few good scares in an otherwise fascinating family movie about magic pools and baseball – which is more than enough Night swimming a worthy addition to the list of interesting January horror films worth watching.

Night swimming is currently playing in the cinema.