Everyone’s wrong about Night Swim, a good horror movie and a better family tragedy

polygon.com:

January is a special time for horror fans. The holidays are over, the new year is just beginning, and the horror options at the box office are as much of a mixed bag as they’ll be all year. Some years, we get great conversation-starters like M3GAN, Missing,or Saint Maud. Other years, we suffer through another Grudge remake. But most of the time, January is a great spot for weird little curiosities like Gretel & Hansel, Underwater, or Infinity Pool — movies with tremendous bright spots that are a little too uneven to be great.

The requirements for something good in January, for most horror fans, are just that it’s interesting and/or entertaining. And despite what some reviews are saying, the “haunted swimming pool” movie Night Swim is both. It’s got one terrifically creepy sequence, a genuinely fascinating family story, some solid jokes, and a thermal spring that’s also sort of an ancient god. And if that still isn’t enough for you, it’s also weirdly as much about baseball as it is about swimming at night.

The movie follows the Waller family as they move into a new house. The dad, Ray (a terrific Wyatt Russell), is a baseball star suffering from multiple sclerosis, but harboring dreams of playing again one day. His wife, Eve (Kerry Condon), is more than capable of taking care of things around the house, since Ray’s career previously kept him away for days and weeks at a time. And the kids, Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren), are desperate to settle into a new school for good this time, after years of moving wherever their dad got traded. They’re hoping they might even be able to play some sports themselves. Also, their new house features a magic swimming pool — but that’s a revelation for later.

While Nigh