Night Swim (2024) Dir: Bryce McGuire

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Blumhouse has produced some of the strangest, best, and worst, horror films of the century to-date, but what you can always count on them to do is to take a chance on a unique story. Well, the premise for this 2024 horror, directed by Bryce McGuire, was certainly out there. To be totally transparent, I thought this was one of the dumbest premises for a horror movie I'd seen in some time. It reminded me of ridiculous low-budget horrors like 'Sharknado' or 'The Sand'. I hoped the quality of this would at least be higher than those, though.

Whilst the camerawork wasn't terrible, for the most part, there was some genuinely horrendously shot flashback sequences that I simply had to laugh at. It didn't help that the green screen and CGI looked absolutely abysmal - very much akin to those two films I mentioned in my introduction. It made even harder to take an already ridiculous premise seriously.

The narrative for that aforementioned premise was just bizarre, as much as anything else, and terribly written. It was surreal seeing two fairly acclaimed actors working in such an odd and poorly conceived film. Even the film's big twist was terrible - I was left in disbelief that I still see Instagram reels talking about it as a shocking modern twist. The whole film was a mess from start to finish.

Wyatt Russell turned in a tired and forgettable leading performance, which was far below his usually pretty solid acting standards in recent years. I really thought that, if anyone was going to be an asset to this film, it would be him, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. This was a far cry from Russell's best, but, in fairness, if there was ever a film to phone it in on, it would be this one.

For the record, I like Kerry Condon as an actress, but I really did not like her performance in this film. It was honestly jarring hearing Condon speaking with an American accent - her real accent kept sneaking through, and it just skewed her whole performance. She felt inauthentic and forced, which is very unlike her, at least in terms of what I've seen of her acting to this point. This was definitely one to forget for Condon, unfortunately.

The pair of Amélie Hoeferle and Gavin Warren provided a pair of adequate but unremarkable performances in their supporting roles. I don't think their characters were particularly well-written, but they did at least feel consistent in their acting. Of the two, I would say I preferred Hoederle's performance, mainly because of how she did in the final third of the film.

Overall, I think this has got to be one of the most random horror films I've seen in a long time, and probably one of the worst ones too. I wasn't exactly expecting a good film, but I was at least hoping for something entertaining. This was certainly not that. In fact, it offered very little of note in the slightest. It was a film that drowned in its own mediocrity, and slipped below the surface without so much as a ripple.