Directed by:
Bryce McGuireCinematography:
Charlie SarroffComposer:
Mark KorvenCast:
Kerry Condon, Wyatt Russell, Nancy Lenehan, Ben Sinclair, Jodi Long, Eddie Martinez, Gavin Warren, Amélie Hoeferle, Ellie Araiza, Elijah J. Roberts (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
Based on the acclaimed 2014 short film by Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire, the film stars Wyatt Russell as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Oscar® nominee Kerry Condon), teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and young son Elliot (Gavin Warren). Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror. (Universal Pictures AU)
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Reviews (5)
A generic January horror flick with zero ideas and even more lacklustre execution. It's like Jason Blum suddenly called out on a whim, "Make me... eh... a haunted pool movie in one week. Go!" It's all bland, cribbed from a blueprint seen a hundred times, devoid of any energy, devoid of anything memorable. No one here has tried to do anything more than make it at least visually look like a movie for the cinema. A puddle at the bottom of a real swimming pool is scarier and, unfortunately, more creative than this entire would-be horror film.
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Chlorine-soaked Poltergeist, or you could be Kurt Russell's son and still not realize that a dangerous entity is wreaking havoc in your home pool. The director is from Florida, so his fear and respect for water are understandable (after all, where else can you have a non-inflatable alligator in your pool?). The theme of the 'sinister swimming pool' doesn’t offer much in terms of options, but it floats along in decent technical execution and without any notable effort to truly scare until its odd conclusion. Couldn’t they have turned it into a skate park instead?
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The first mainstream horror film of the year and it is, as expected, a yawner. The haunted pool idea could have been original, but it's generic to the point of woe in every way. No atmosphere, the scares don't work, it's so light and soft in every way. I'm pretty sick and tired of genre flicks like this. Not fun. 4/10.
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The premise with the mysterious and dangerous swimming pool is quite original, but unfortunately it doesn't provide enough material to fill the entire running time in any interesting way. It's an hour and a half long, and it's still too long. After half an hour, the escalating situations start to get repetitive and just boil over (sic!!), and by the last tense twenty minutes it starts to get ridiculous too, there's a lot of black liquid spitting and tearing, and the bland and young Wyatt Russell tries in vain to convey any emotion. Most of the time it didn't offend me with its stupidity, but I still don't understand the cinema release, this only belongs on stream. In the case of Kurt Russell, as well as, say, Clint Eastwood, it's true that their sons don't have much charisma or acting talent.
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I've seen a possessed house, possessed dolls and possessed animals, but a possessed swimming pool, that new, and I think it's obvious why. Because the whole thing is just one extremely boring piece of nonsense with no tension, supporting characters or a better idea, and watching people floating in a pool with no peripheral vision, while the shot looks like the character is swimming in an endless ocean, and therefore completely implausible and uninteresting, really doesn't do it for me. The monsters are nonexistent, the make-up effects are bad, the idea is rubbish and the only saving grace that separates this film from a Boo! rating is the fact that I (thankfully) didn't see it in the cinema but watched it at home. Avoid it.
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