It’s long been an extreme palate cleanser, the first weekend of January following a season of weighty awards fare with a froth of schlock horror, from fine dining to a guilty stop at McDonald’s after. Masterworks such as The Devil Inside (6%), Texas Chainsaw 3D (19%), The Forest (10%) and The Unborn (10%) have all crept out of the gate in previous years, often unscreened for critics, and despite a consistent lack of quality, the practice has become profitable, audiences happy to see in the new year with the very worst the industry has to offer. Then last year, there was an unlikely win with sly evil doll horror M3gan, bucking the trend as not only a major commercial smash but also a critical one, and backers, horror hit-factory Blumhouse, duly rushed another on to the production line, primed for that once-cursed January release.
Yet Night Swim, a film about an evil swimming pool, is no M3gan and while not as atrocious as these first week frighteners can often be, it’s akin to a cold splash of water in the face, an immediate return to the ho-hum norm of before. It’s the sort of bottom-shelf concept that feels more at home in the 80s, alongside Blood Beach, Death Bed and Killer Workout and there’s not not some trashy fun to be squeezed out of such a lurid premise. Yet unlike those films, it’s accompanied by an uncomfortably stony face, silliness taken with far more seriousness than it deserves, quickly sinking the whole thing further by the minute.
