Unfortunately, the streak of flops to start 2024 continues with the newest Blumhouse property, Night Swim.

The movie doesn’t start poorly – it’s actually interesting enough. As so many horror movies do, it begins with a flashback to the “first haunting” when a young girl vanishes from the pool in her backyard late one night. 30 years later, a major league baseball player who recently suffered an injury moves with his family to a suburban home near his wife’s new job…and yes, it’s that same house. With the same pool.

A string of mysterious hauntings begin to appear to the family members as they each individually spend time in the pool (I’ve never seen a family who swims more than this one). What is totally unclear are the correlations between the apparitions, and also the rules that govern them – most of the time, they appear in the pool, but other times, they are around the pool, and there’s even an instance where one seems to make something happen inside the house. The pool seems to haunt some people, but the father seems to be healed by it. Like - what? The lore surrounding what’s going on is incredibly, frustratingly vague. This is only made worse by an intentional obfuscation of the truth, and most of the movie is spent wasting time while the characters really do nothing to investigate what’s happening.

After a sudden and confusing crescendo at a pool party, the movie totally derails. Wyatt Russell’s performance also falls apart here, with some line deliveries that are extraordinarily questionable (you’ll know what I mean when he asks, “is he ok?”). The most egregious mistake here, though, is the decision to explain the entirety of what’s going on in the movie in a five-minute conversation with a somewhat related character who, up until that point, had not been involved with the plot whatsoever. What cripples the effect of this reveal even more is how late in the movie it comes; once we know what’s happening, there’s no more room for tension to build or dread to creep, and therefore, it limps across the finish line with a climax that attempts and fails at multiple solemn emotional connections.

The only thing I agree with here? The decision on what becomes of the pool in the last scene. Finally, logic.