Night Swim (2024)★★☆☆☆

Sometimes I feel bad, like maybe the reason I didn’t like a movie is because I’m tired, or in a bad mood, or otherwise feeling things that are priming me to not like any movies. And I don’t really know how to tell the difference between my feelings about mediocre movies on those days versus “normal” days. I feel like it’s easy to tell if I REALLY like or REALLY dislike a movie…but sometimes it’s too difficult to decide between two or three stars.

This is kind of one of those days. And I’m sorry, Night Swim, but I just can’t give you that third star.

Apparently this movie was based off a short film of the same name. Honestly? That makes sense. This movie feels like a short that got extended way past its welcome. Like there’s an interesting seed of a story here, wrapped in so much boring filler.

I just didn’t care about any of the characters, and I didn’t really buy the family chemistry. There are a couple of really tense and intense creepy scenes, but they’re spread out so much that the momentum never really builds. The ending feels so anticlimactic and obvious, and I just didn’t really care who was or wasn’t going to die.

Also? Terrible real estate agent! She found out from a friend afterwards that this was the “same house” that a bunch of people died in? Okay. Sure. I know that’s a small problem in the grand scheme of things, but combined with a whole bunch of stilted dialogue and boring characters, it stood out to me more than it maybe would have otherwise.