'Night Swim' review: Dull horror outing never makes it out of the shallow end

It's not just the swimming pool that's haunted.

"Night Swim" is a numbingly dull horror outing with a cursed script that's about as scary as a game of Marco Polo. This is a movie where a drain, a flickering light and a pool filter are the villains, and there's only so many ways to disguise the fact that barely anything is happening on screen. Even by the low standards of an early January fright flick, "Night Swim" is a total washout.

Major League Baseball 3rd baseman Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell, who also portrayed a baseball player in Richard Linklater's "Everybody Wants Some!!") moves his family to the Twin Cities after a degenerative disease flushes him out of the Bigs. Along with his wife Eve (Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon) and their two teenagers (Amélie Hoeferle and Gavin Warren), they settle in a home with a glorious backyard swimming pool where Ray can rehab himself through water therapy. Bonus!

But it turns out the pool has a backstory. In an early flashback, we see the pool — the pool! — take the life of a child, tricking her with a floating toy boat and somehow causing her to disappear into its waters. The flashback is to 1992, the same year R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming" was released, but there are no other allusions to the "Automatic for the People" fan favorite.

Back in the present, strange things are happening in the deep end. Ray is healing quickly and is suddenly able to crush baseballs like he's Roy friggin' Hobbs. And occasionally there's some shenanigans in the pool, but nothing too serious. Again, there's only so many ways one can menacingly shoot a drain.

Turns out there's some weirdness with the water, which recalls 2016 darker, freakier "A Cure for Wellness." But that only serves to remind there's not much of anything going on here, and in his feature film debut, writer-director Bryce McGuire can't establish a tone of either fear or silliness compelling enough to sit through. So "Night Swim" just kind of sits there, passively, like still water. It barely even makes a splash.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'Night Swim'

GRADE: D

Rated PG-13: for terror, some violent content and language

Running time: 98 minutes

In theaters