{"id":5880,"date":"2024-10-14T23:27:11","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T03:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=5880"},"modified":"2024-10-14T23:27:11","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T03:27:11","slug":"night-swim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/14\/night-swim\/","title":{"rendered":"Night Swim"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Night Swim<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 98 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (terror, some violent content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bryce McGuire\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bryce McGuire\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mark Korven\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Charlie Sarroff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 5, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amelie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren, Jodi Long, Nancy Lenehan, Eddie Martinez, Elijah Roberts, Rahnuma Panthaky, Ben Sinclair, Ellie Araiza, Ayazhan Dalabayeva, Joziah Lagonoy, Aivan Alexander Uttapa.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0I might as well get it out of the way now. The first new release of 2024, the Blumhouse horror film Night Swim<\/strong>, is all wet. I shouldn\u2019t be surprised, not really. Typically, every year starts out with a bad PG-13 fright flick. Last year\u2019s M3GAN was the exception to the rule. It was actually pretty good. I never believed for a second that Blumhouse could pull it off again. Lo and behold, they didn\u2019t. Night Swim<\/strong> is as lame as almost any PG-13 horror you could name.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s something evil in the pool. That\u2019s the Reader\u2019s Digest version of the plot synopsis. I\u2019d be perfectly content to leave it at that since I\u2019m not too keen on reliving the tedious viewing experience that is Night Swim<\/strong>. Alas, my job requires me to elaborate, so here goes. I truly hope you all appreciate it. A family looking to lay down roots in a community moves into a new house. It has a swimming pool in the backyard. It\u2019s ideal for the dad Ray Waller (Russell, Overlord), a former baseball star forced into retirement with the onset of MS. He can use it for water therapy. Over time, his MS goes into remission. It seems that the water, taken from a nearby spring, has healing powers. However, there\u2019s a price and it isn\u2019t pleasant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ray sees the pool as a godsend; the rest of his family does not. His wife Eve (Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin) is concerned about the changes she\u2019s seeing in him. Both kids, teen daughter Izzy (Hoeferle, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and young son Elliot (Warren, Fear the Walking Dead), were attacked by something in the pool. The family cat has disappeared. A girl that lived there in 1992 disappeared in the pool. Like I said, there\u2019s something evil in it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Written and directed by Bryce McGuire, Night Swim<\/strong> is an expansion of his same-named short film from ten years ago. It\u2019s his first feature film and the good news is there\u2019s nowhere to go but up. Okay, he could conceivably do worse, but let\u2019s not completely discourage the man his first time at bat. At the same time, I\u2019m not going to lie. Night Swim<\/strong> is a bad movie. It\u2019s boring, pointless and not the least bit scary or original. I haven\u2019t been this not scared of a so-called scary movie since the last (or first for that matter) Blair Witch film. It moves at roughly the same pace as molasses going uphill in winter. The CGI is just plain terrible. There are no effective \u201cBOO!\u201d scenes. There aren\u2019t any ineffective ones either. Night Swim<\/strong> is horror on life support. Somebody should have pulled the plug during production.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Is there any point in discussing the acting? It\u2019s as bad as everything else in Night Swim<\/strong>. But I don\u2019t blame the actors, not entirely. McGuire doesn\u2019t give them much to work with. Their characters are paper thin and dull. Character development is in short supply. By movie\u2019s end, I felt like I was watching a bunch of strangers. I didn\u2019t care what happened to any of them. The lack of development extends to the screenplay as well. The plot is half-assed and doesn\u2019t really explain anything.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I can\u2019t imagine anybody being entertained by Night Swim<\/strong>, not even the preteens and young teens for whom it\u2019s intended. They\u2019ll be as bored as any seasoned horror vet sitting through this pile of dreck. The only positive thing I can say here is that I only have to find nine more movies to put on my 10 Worst of 2024 list at the end of the year. Somebody definitely pissed in this pool.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Night Swim (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 98 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (terror, some violent content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bryce McGuire\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bryce McGuire\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mark Korven\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Charlie Sarroff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 5, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amelie Hoeferle, Gavin Warren, Jodi Long, Nancy Lenehan, Eddie Martinez, Elijah Roberts, Rahnuma Panthaky, Ben Sinclair, Ellie Araiza, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Night-Swim-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5880"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6087,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5880\/revisions\/6087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}