Released by: Universal Studios Night Swim – Movie Review: The feature length directorial debut of Bryce McGuire, a collaboration between James Wan's Atomic Monster and Blumhouse, 2024’s Night Swim opens with a scene set in 1992 where a young girl looks out her window and sees a toy boat floating in the pool in the backyard. Despite the fact that it’s late at night, she heads out of the house and tries to retrieve the boat. She drowns, but before she does, she sees some odd, human-like shapes around the pool. From here, we meet Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) and his wife Eve (Kerry Condon). Ray was once a professional baseball player who made it in the major leagues but health problems forced him to take an early retirement. He and Eve, along with their kids Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and her younger brother Elliot (Gavin Warren), decide to buy a house in the suburbs and wind up moving into, of course, that very same house from the opening scene. They’re excited about the pool, though it’s been neglected over the years and needs some work and the filter is always making weird noises. As the Waller’s get used to their new digs, the pool becomes a big part of their life – it allows them to get some exercise, to relax and to have a social life. But as we know from that opening scene, this pool isn’t a normal pool at all… An expanded, feature-length version of Bryce McGuire’s short film of the same name, Night Swim is fun. It’s really well shot with some interesting camera angles showing us the POV of certain characters when they are underwater helping to create a unique sense of tension and to pull us into what is, let’s be honest, a patently ridiculous story about a haunted swimming pool. But more often than not, it works. The setup is particularly well-done and while the second half starts to rely too heavily on the type of cliché-ridden jump scares that far too many modern horror movies depend on, it does built to an effectively ridiculous conclusion that you probably won’t see coming. Staying safely within the confines of its PG-13 rating, this is hardly a gorefest but it does feature some pretty cool makeup and creature effects work that are on full display in the second half of the movie. The pool itself is creepier than a concrete hole in the ground filled with water should ever have the right to be, and the performances are pretty good all around. Russell makes for a reliable leading man, we like him enough and he has pretty good chemistry with Kerry Condon, who is just as good as he is. Night Swim – Blu-ray Review: Night Swim arrives on a 50GB Blu-ray from Universal Studios in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 2.39.1 widescreen and it looks just as good as you’d expect a brand new movie shot on high end digital equipment would look. There’s some solid detail in the image and colors look excellent. Black levels are strong and skin tones look natural enough. Depth and texture take advantage of the format and look quite good, while the image is free of any obvious compression problems.
Released on: April 22nd, 2024.
Director: Bryce McGuire
Cast: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle
Year: 2024
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Audio options are provided in English and Spanish 24-bit DTS-HD 7.1 Surround Sound options and a French DTS 5.1 Surround Sound mix with optional subtitles available in English SDH, French Canadian, European French, and Latin American Spanish. No complaints about the sound quality here, the English 7.1 mix is a good one, using rear channels effectively throughout and delivering some pretty strong bass response. Dialogue remains clear throughout, the track is free of any hiss or distortion and the soundtrack has a lot of kick to it. An English language descriptive audio track is also provided.
Bryce McGuire offers up an audio commentary track, flying solo, that details how James Wan and Jason Blum came to work with him on this project, turning his short film into a feature, collaborating with the cast and crew, specific details of shooting key scenes, dealing with having to a shoot a lot of the movie in and around a basic swimming pool, the effects work, what he tried to accomplish with certain moments in the movie and more.
As far as the featurettes go, we start off with a seven minute piece called 'Into The Deep' that interviews Wyatt Russell Bruce McGuire, James Wan, Judson Scott, Jason Blum, Kerry Condon and Ryan Turek that covers turning McGuire's short film into a feature, casting the movie about what it was like working together and what went into making a movie about a haunted swimming pool.
Up next is a seven minute segment called 'Demon From The Depths' that goes over the effects work created for the movie with McGuire, Scott, Russell, Turek, Michael Avery, Wan. They discuss putting together the design work, the effects themselves, the suit needed to create the ghosts and more.
'Masters Of Fear' is a six minute segment with the same interviewees that goes over how Jason Blum and James Wan cam to collaborate with first-time director, Bryce McGuire, what it was like working together and how everyone brought their A-game to the production.
'Marco Polo' is a four minute piece, with the same interviewees, that goes over what went into putting together some of the more important scare scenes in the swimming pool based on the kids' game often played around a pool.
This release also comes bundled with a DVD version of the movie, an insert card containing a code that can be redeemed for a digital HD download version of the movie, as well as a slipcover with its first pressing.
Night Swim - The Final Word:
Night Swim isn’t going to blow you away but it’s a pretty decent, and frequently amusing, horror movie that conjures up some solid atmosphere, offers up good effects work and which contains some strong performances. The Blu-ray edition from Universal Pictures looks and sounds excellent, and while the featurettes are fairly repetitive, the commentary from McGuire is pretty interesting.
