Should you go for a Night Swim or stay out of the pool? The answer may surprise you.

Night Swim. // Photo by Anne Marie Fox/Universal Pictures

Remember the conversation we all had last year when M3GAN came out? How it went harder than it had any right to, and was a treat of a January movie? A bloody little pick-me-up in a bleak and generally un-fun month?

Ok, good. You’re gonna want to keep that in mind where we’re going.

Night Swim, out this weekend, is, like M3GAN, a Blumhouse release produced by James Wan under his Atomic Monster banner. That alone should be enough reason to give the movie from writer-director Bryce McGuire—based on his short film—a try. I grant you that “killer swimming pool” is a VERY silly premise for a horror movie. But then, “killer robot doll in a sailor dress” seemed pretty silly when the first trailer for M3GAN dropped, and look what we got.

Night Swim doesn’t have M3GAN’s impeccable sense of camp. It does, however, have a surprising amount of pathos.

McGuire’s movie gets messy when establishing consistent rules around its central haunting. But the work he’s put into his characters and the concepts he uses the film to explore wouldn’t be out of place in a Stephen King or Paul Tremblay short story. It adds up to a stronger-than-expected result, even if the flaws are still apparent.

Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) is a baseball player whose major league career is cut short by an MS diagnosis. He and his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) and kids Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren) want to settle down and figure out what comes next. They buy a house for a suspiciously low price. There’s a swimming pool in the backyard that seems to have a miraculous effect on Ray’s MS, leading him to think the time might be right for a comeback.

Is it all too good to be true? I mean, it’s a horror movie, you do the math. In addition to healing qualities, the pool has a nasty habit of disappearing people. The kids and Eve quickly deduce something’s not right, but Ray, unwilling to give up his new lease on life, puts up blinders. That is, until the pool tries to take something away that he can’t part with in good conscience.

The obvious argument here is “just stay out of the pool,” but McGuire does a decent job showing the family’s rationalization, and fear of confronting upsetting and incomplete information just when everyone is finally doing so well. Eve starts having weird dreams, but those are just dreams, surely. The cat goes missing, but that happens, right? Not until events occur that simply cannot be attributed to anything else do the characters realize something supernatural is up.

Night Swim. // Photo by Anne Marie Fox/Universal Pictures

Just what is happening in the pool is the source of contention, and of most of the movie’s problems. Throughout, McGuire gives us underwater shots suggesting the pool itself is a malevolent entity. Good enough, though a concept shrouded in mystery works better in short film format, where lingering questions don’t matter as much. McGuire introduces other forms the malevolent spirit (?) in the pool takes, including some creepy beasties and a ghost realm, but none of them are consistent. It feels like indecision on McGuire’s part, though he does eventually make the ultimate guiding principle clear.

What’s worth sticking around for is the family dynamic. Good horror stories use the monster as a conduit for other ideas, and Night Swim is no different. It’s actually about Ray obsessing over his glory days to the detriment of his relationship with his family, and Eve’s understanding of what Ray’s career required of her, all explored with methodical pacing. 

Ray records over some family home videos with footage of him practicing his swing to share with scouts. We get different versions of Ray and Eve’s accounts of Izzy’s birth — he was at a game and claims he felt a burst of strength at her arrival, while Eve, giving birth by herself, felt abandoned and terrified. As the stakes mount, the conflict becomes whether Ray is strong enough to choose his family over the man he once was, and if he’s willing to make the necessary sacrifice to save them.

While Night Swim is far from perfect, McGuire’s interest in deeper themes and ability to explore them subtly alongside decent scares show a lot of promise. That sense is bolstered by committed performances—particularly from the always-great Condon—that make the characters and their lives together feel sympathetic and lived-in.

There’s room to improve, certainly, but Night Swim has good bones, and that counts for a lot.