“Night Swim” (2024) focuses on the Waller family who were accustomed to going wherever their professional baseball player dad’s career took them, but because of his declining health, they are ready to settle down. Ray (Wyatt Russell) is drawn to a house with a pool, but wife Eve (Oscar nominee Kerry Condon) struggles to set aside her apprehensions. Their children, daughter and athlete Izzy (Amelie Hoeferle) and son Elliot (Gavin Warren), notice strange noises and shadowy figures around the pool, but keep their mouths shut because dad is happy. When Eve discovers the pool’s origins, will it be too late to save her family?

“Night Swim” never waivers from pointing to the pool as the culprit, and the filmmakers cite “Poltergeist” (1982) as inspiration, but they wait too late in the film to establish the culprit, who is more of a vague concept, and instead devote a lot of time to showing the effect of its malfeasance. In retrospect, some scenes make more sense such as throwing coins in the pool, but no viewer is going to imbue that moment with more significance without a few more breadcrumbs. A film like “Smile” (2022) worked despite inventing a brand-new demon with a new mythology because the rules were simple and clear whereas McGuire and Blackhurst’s approach supplants existing European folklore, which surprisingly has no sinister underbelly, about water, and viewers must wait until the denouement for the film to spell out what is happening. Even after this explanation, the rules are still somewhat inscrutable. The filmmakers did not pay attention to details and were busier with stringing together archetypes and borrowing from horror classics like the novels “It” and “The Shining” and (thanks, Ken Murray) “The Amityville Horror” (1979 & 2005).

Director and cowriter Bryce McGuire and cowriter Rod Blackhurst expanded “Night Swim” from a 2014 short film. McGuire was the sole writer, and Blackhurst and McGuire shared the director’s chair. Megalyn Echikunwoke (“The 4400”) starred with Margot the kitty! Some features should remain shorts. While the filmmakers are deft at creating an atmosphere filled with dread and had a gifted casting director who snagged a talented ensemble cast with great chemistry and appeal, they need to work on their writing skills. The movie is a big tease that pulls punches and has so many dangling threads that Alex and Belle, the cats who play cat Cider Waller, must have been exhausted from swatting at them.

For instance, Eve works at the school and is going to school at night online. Doesn’t matter. “Night Swim” never even shows her doing schoolwork at night for filler to establish the family’s routine before it gets disrupted. Ray fails at supervising Elliot at the pool. Not one flash of displeasure crosses Eve’s face. Elliot sets up a camera to monitor the pool to get proof, and it captures something. Never comes up again. Izzy’s potential boyfriend, fellow swim teammate Ronin (Elijah J. Roberts), casually mentions that he is a Christian, and two of Izzy’s friends do as well. Totally random detail and missed opportunity to have a spiritual warfare battle, but maybe is supposed to explain why the pool did not mess with him? When Izzy and Ronin are hanging out at the pool, he inexplicably leaves so she can get scared….it makes no sense for a teenage boy to stop making out to do *waves around vaguely* something. When Izzy and Elliot are finally consulting each other about the weirdness, which they hide from their parents, THEY GO IN THE HALL TO TALK INSTEAD OF IZZY’S ROOM! Later Elliot will sleep on the floor in her room so it is not a privacy issue.

Also Izzy plays a huge role in the denouement, but is underdeveloped through most of “Night Swim.”. Izzy is into boys, mean to her brother and thinks more about her parents than her own happiness. It would have made more sense to show Izzy as a softball player instead of a swimmer. Also everyone parentifies Izzy. Eve admits that she uses her so she doesn’t feel alone. Ray said that Izzy strengthens him. Izzy also takes on the role of insuring her parents’ psychological well-being. These are functions of a parent, not a child, yet the filmmakers are ignorant of how harmful it is. It is framed as a positive, encouraging trait. Get a woman to write or at least consult. Even reading a couple of Reddit AITA entries would help them write from a burdened teen girl’s perspective.

“Night Swim” could have been a good movie if it was more unflinching, but it wants to be a movie about everything and nothing. The core concept is a family whose life revolves around one person’s needs, in the Waller’s case, the dad. It is about patriarchy, y’all, but it never seemed to occur to the filmmakers because they were too sympathetic to the dad. Even if they were aiming for that target, they do not completely get it.

Ray does not have to be a bad guy to be swimming in patriarchy. The entire family thinks that it is natural for the family to move wherever and whenever he wants, which made sense when he was the sole breadwinner, and Eve was not questioning it. So when he chooses a fixer upper, it is his wife who does the manual labor. Yes, he is sick so of course he could not do it, but he also could have chosen a house that would not add to her burden. What does he do? Not the finances. He hangs out in the garage and works on his health. Even the most submissive wife, which Eve was not, would have reamed her husband out over failing to watch the kids. There is zero anger directed at the dad for being oblivious to his family’s needs then when he is ready to sacrifice or make up for making their lives worse, it is supposed to be a noble act instead of the bare minimum. Dad learns that he needs to care about his safety and well-being before his own. Where is Nancy Pelosi doing a sideways clap when you need her?

The entire family’s default is to massage his ego, and “Night Swim” never has a moment to signal that is wrong. The filmmakers are understandably sympathetic, as am I, to someone who is sick and just wants to be their old self, but when he makes his son’s softball practice about himself, that was toxic. His problem is not wanting to get better. His issue is that he thinks that everything serves him, even Little League exists to be his stage. It is gross.  When the wife figures out what is going, her outrage is directed at

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an Asian woman instead of her husband. Jodi Long killed it as Kay, an elderly woman who sacrifices her daughter so her sick son could live. The water spirit possesses people and grants wishes, but the price is a life. The water spirit still appears to control Kay perhaps because she brought some water from the pool, which is located over a natural spring, to her new residence and put the “magic water” in her fountain, but Kay is consenting. She values her son’s life over her daughter, Rebecca (Ayazhan Dalabayeva), and even denies that Rebecca ever existed. Kay encourages Eve to just go with it instead of stopping it so Ray gets better, “Love requires sacrifice.” Mom screams back, “It’s not a sacrifice if you get something back.” Internalized misogyny makes women devalue themselves and their daughters, but the film perpetuates misogyny by only making women as conscious actors whereas men need a girl and woman’s intervention to get a clue. Also is it racist for the only onscreen pool victim to be a person of color and the Asian woman to be explicitly sexist as if regardless of ethnicity or gender, everyone is not sexist?!? I don’t know, but I was not the only one wondering at the screening.

By making Elliot into the sacrifice, they sidestep the obvious gendered human sacrifice of women, but I think that “Night Swim” did it so there could be a primal mom fighting for their child moment. Also the pool wants a strong person like Rebecca or Ty (Aivan Uttapa), the coach’s kid and star softball player. Why would the pool want Elliot when he was the weaker of the two children? The stronger choice would have been to just have one kid, Izzy, play softball and swim. Why should Izzy play softball? Because she is the only one who swings a bat with her own the strength and connects with her target. It is the most powerful counterimage in the film to the pool’s powers, especially since she is a daddy’s girl. Mom could have been the sacrificial lamb and still had a great swimming scene.

So how do you make Ray into a victim and perpetrator? His attraction to danger and pain, i.e. a toxic system, makes him a victim. The family is just driving around, and he is drawn to the pool. The pool lures people with what they want for themselves or others. Eleven minutes into “Night Swim,” he gets dragged into the pool. He also gets his hand ripped to shreds. He does not think these are red flags. If Kay could simultaneously have autonomy and be possessed, Ray should not be oblivious the entire time. When Eve sees him at the pool then he disappears, he thinks that he was asleep, but it would have been better if he kind of knew and was hiding what was happening to him. It would have been a far more interesting to show his struggle with weighing the pros and cons of just thinking of himself and accepting the pool. His first awakening, like most men who try to deconstruct their identity, should have been an awakening to how he was hurting himself, not concern for his family. He does not have practice putting his family first. His first act would be an epiphany and a conscious decision. What a missed opportunity!