If your pool was a magical healing genie, and
by genie I mean grave full of vengeful rotten corpse demons that reneged on their deals, and
by deals I mean implicit nonverbal agreements to sacrifice your children in exchange for healing
your terminal illness enacted simply by.. Swimming in the pool, what would you do?
I’m going to break down the mistakes made, what you should do, and how to beat
the BLOATED GENIE in NIGHT SWIM.
We start out following a young girl. Her deep
slumber is awoken by a toy boat ticking around in the pool because whoever built this house
put no effort into soundproofing it. The toy boat is such an annoyance that the little
girl simply must don her bunny slippers to deal with it at this late hour. Well, more
so because it’s her terminally ill brothers, and she needs to save it.. Apparently..
She grabs the pool cleaner to fish it out. Only now, the boat is fully submerged at the bottom of
the pool, having taken on too much water. Sweet, let’s just leave it until the morning. It’s
no longer a nuisance, and it’s not like your terminally ill brother is going to play with
it right now anyway. Besides, it’s a boat, it’s supposed to be in the pool. Alright
alright, enough ripping on the lil one.
She’s downright determined,
scooting her bunny slippers to the edge of the pool. It’s a slippery one.
That’s what you get for breaking curfew.
Her mom’s figure appears, lending a hand
to help her out. When the girl surfaces, her mom vanishes. Like she was a ghost.
Then everyone’s worst primal fear being in a pool by yourself at night happens. The lights
go out. Safe to say her arse should have dolphin-jumped out the goddang pool as soon
as she surfaced. Absolutely no good is going to come from doggy paddling in murky waters.
When she finally goes for the side, little Tommy’s boat pops back to the top. Hot freak have I
ever seen more obvious bait. Evil Jelly Bean Trail strikes again, and you know this girl can’t
resist this jelly bean. Even when it makes zero sense to go for it. Bitch, you got yanked into
the pool by an invisible force, f*ck the boat. get the hell out of the pool NOW.
Little Susie vanishes, sucked down into oblivion by the pool drain demon. A stern
lesson to never enter a pool by yourself at night. And if the ghost of Randy Orton RKO’s
you into your backyard pool, you butterfly your arse to shore without a second thought.
Since that storyline hit a deadend, we’re now following Ray, Eve, their daughter X, and son X.
Get this, they are looking for a new home and boy does this real estate agent have a deal for them.
3 bedrooms, a lovely community, 1 owner for past couple decades, in a great school district, and
priced to sell. It does need a little TLC to spiff it up though, oh, and a little girl was murdered
in the pool. Did I mention it’s in a great school district? Yah, the real estate agent fails to
disclose this key fact, because they have no legal obligation to and it’d sell for less. Look, I get
that it’s not a big deal if gran gran slipped away in her sleep at 92. It’s a bit different when
an 8 year old mysteriously disappears down the drain. It’s on Ray and Eve to dig up this info,
which you should do especially if you’re getting a strangely good deal on a home.
Luckily WikiHow has you covered.
Upon discovering the happening, you
could pinch pennies, buy the house, then fill the pool and put a swing set over
it. But are you really willing to roll the dice on whether or not that did the trick? Are
you prepared to open the blinds one morning to find your daughter swinging by her neck? Maybe
just wait for the market to cool down a bit.
Before they head out, Ray’s eye catches something.
Oh my god they left her slipper in the pool. Ray, having taken one too many balls to the head
during his days as a pitcher, decides he must fish it out. Bro tries to crawl out onto the
tarp to grab it instead of using his cane. Why am I even helping, dude, it’s old pool garbage,
leave it and go take your family to lunch.
It’s not looking good. He’s all caught
up in vines. He does make it out alive, unlike little Susie. Probably because he GTFO’d
immediately. Now had he been tempted by the toy boat or a Babe Ruth autographed baseball, safe to
say it would've been all over. Pool drain demon needs to work on its choices of bait.
Eve takes Ray to see the doc again about his episodes. Seems his MS has progressed to secondary
progressive MS. Symptoms include spasticity, stiffness, numbness, difficulty with walking
and general coordination. The doc prescribes him a regimen of aquatic therapy AKA
swimming, hopefully supervised.
With that in mind, it only makes sense to buy the
house with the pool. After we get it thoroughly inspected as you do, of course.
Ray and Eve opted to sign the dotted line without doing so. Which is why Ray’s the
one to discover the drain clogged with rotten soup water that Little Susie’s corpse has been
marinating in. You’re gonna wanna get the cut looked at with a healthy dose of antibiotics.
Now they hire the pool inspector. He tells them their pool is fed by deep groundwater. I guess
that explains away the sludge. Nothing a little chlorine shock can’t fix. Time to jump in.
Later that night, Eve goes for a.. Night Swim..
The lights flicker out. Without me having to say a word, she gets her feet out of the pool
as fast as possible. The pool light suddenly turns back on. Eve’s rightfully spooked, and immediately
goes to check on her family. I’m glad she’s not just brushing it off as an unlikely coincidence.
Hell, I think she’s about to kick off a house history murder mystery research montage.
She wants to have a pool cover installed, and get the lights checked out. Unfortunately, it
won’t be in time to keep Whiskers from ‘falling in’. The only remnant is the cat’s collar,
which the family finds in the morning.
Ray fishes it out then goes to rebandage his
wound. Only, the severe laceration he sustained from digging through the drain a day ago is
completely, immaculately healed. I’d hesitate to speculate that it was magically healed in
exchange for the cat's sacrifice. This doesn’t seem like the give and take type of demon. Though
I suspect that in some quiet part of Ray’s brain, he’s thinking the same thing. Okay, so in exchange
for a cat’s life, a cut on our hand is healed. What’s a fair trade for MS? Does a neighbor kid
count? How bad do you want to play baseball again, Ray? Don’t you dare put that pool cover over me or
the deals off! EFF. Oh you're going to pay.
The mental f*ckery escalates with Eve having
a nightmare, waking up to another nightmare. Ray’s lapping their pool at 3am. You need to pinch
yourself super hard or something. Whatever you do, do not go near that pool. Ultimately she
doesn’t, so we never find out if that was the demon playing tricks or not.
Based on the doctor's reports, I’m inclined to believe it was actually him. Trying to
get that sweet sweet demon healing. She’s never seen such a miraculous recovery.
I’m a bit perplexed. Everyone that’s gone for a night swim, including the cat, has been
vanished or close to it, except Ray. Dude’s just splish splashing without a care.
Is this a clever way for the demon to ensure they don’t move or fill up the pool?
I mean, how could their family deprive Ray of his means to a full recovery.
Is it too early for Eve to put the pieces together? The case is thin, no doubt, but there’s
been a lot of strange happenings. Her nightmares, the missing cat, Ray’s mysterious recovery.
Maybe. Maybe she just needs one more sign, and lucky for her, I think this demon’s
gonna give her one she won’t forget.
Gavin asks his dad to throw some quarters into
the pool he can dive for. Ray promises to come over after he finishes benching. While submerged,
a coin falls in. When Gavin pops to the surface, his dad isn’t there. Hm. must have been the
wind. He puts his goggles on to continue. Another quarter plops in further toward
the deep end, and another even further, and another right on top of the pool drain.
The proverbial evil jelly bean trail, strikes, again. Gavin should be old enough to 1. Realize
that a coin tossed into the pool by nobody is freaking strange, and 2. Having it happen 4 more
times leading into the deep end which your father told you not to swim in, is also strange. Bit
of a red flag. Might be worth popping up to the surface again. If your dad still isn’t there, then
something really weird is going on and you need to get out and tell your parents about it.
After snagging them all on one breath, he notices a figure at the edge of the pool. He surfaces,
and like all the others, nobody is there. He thinks it’s just his sister Izzy messing with him.
So naturally, he swims back to the deep end.
This kid is DUMB. Talk about being
led around by your nose.
Lil bro, are you in a trance or something.
Snap fingers, snap out of it. Do you honestly think a girl is trapped in the tiny pool
gutter? I feel like I’m trying to herd a sheep away from the danger. Painful.
Can you guess what he does next? Yah, he sticks his hand inside.
Wow. I’m utterly disappointed that I’m going to have to continue watching this kid sleepwalk
through this nightmare. As for the demon, this was a free layup. Bout as in the bag as it
gets. How did you mess this up? I swear to god, if this ends with Gavin beating you up with
a wiffle ball bat because ‘he’s not afraid of you anymore’ like that Pennywise punk, I’m
gonna jump in and drown you myself.
Gavin runs inside to tell his mom
what happened, then she discusses it with Ray. At no point does anybody open
up about their own strange waking nightmares and weird occurrences by or in the pool.
It’s Izzy’s turn. With her parents out on date, she invites over a boy from the swim
team, Ronin, for a game of Marco Polo. She has no idea what’s coming.
At this point she still doesn’t realize it’s not Ronin. Hell, she thinks he’s
just messing with her, prompting her to dive into the world’s deepest backyard pool
ever in search of him. Falling right into the bloated corpse monster’s ambush.
It’s all over for Izzy, until she kind of kicks her leg a little hard.. Sending drain bro
back into the abyss. Good god, man. In. the. Bag. What’re you even doing? So little Rebecca
Summers and the cat have simply no chance, but you let Eve, Gavin, and Izzy go, literally,
and even straight up heal Ray’s MS. I think you’ve gone soft. Time to hang up the towel
and kick your feet up on a pool chair.
When Izzy surfaces, panicking, Ronin tells her
she was only down there swimming around for a few seconds. Disconcerting. Whatever is going on,
it can severely warp our perceptions of reality. He tries to calm her down, saying maybe her foot
just got stuck in the pool cleaner. She agrees, but only so he doesn’t think she’s crazy.
Good move. Don’t want to add to our problems by needlessly making people think we’ve lost
it. Start with telling your own family first, see if they’ve had any spooky run-ins. Gavin
seemed to be acting pretty strange recently.
Gavin actually is the one that confronts Izzy
about it. She tells him that their mom and dad are finally doing great, and to shut his mouth
because nobody will believe them anyway.
The silver lining here is that the lack of
spookiness outside of the pool would suggest that simply staying out of the pool will
keep you safe. Kind of a risky, selfish, temporary measure that relies on your whole
family understanding the threat. There’s also no guarantee it couldn’t tiptoe up into your
bedroom at night and slip under the covers with you. There’s no guarantee that filling the pool
will cease the threat, nor running away to a far land which doesn’t share the same groundwater.
It is their best shot, though. With Gavin, Eve, and Izzy all ganging up on Ray, I think they
could strongarm him. Especially with building a case. Doing a little research into the past
residents of the home. Their missing cat, A little camera camera work to see if we can
capture anything on camera, etc. Look Ray, do you want to swing a bat, or do you want your
family alive. Those are your two choices.
But eff it, go ahead and throw a pool
party too. I’m sure the pool monster will enjoy watching from the drain hole.
Gavin’s on the camera situation while Eve pries the real estate agent, Kay, after she’s had a few
too many scoops of rum cake. Eve tells Kay that when they fixed up the pool, the inspector
told them it hadn’t been used in 15 years, maybe longer. Weird. Kay finally spills the
beans. A little girl had drowned in the pool.
At the same moment, Ray’s possessed.
Against his will, he drags his chicken fighting partner under the water.
Ray, Ray, Ray. Should have known that gifts always come with strings attached.
Well, that’s one way to break a party up. Nobody wants anything to do with their family anymore.
Eve gets everyone in the car to drive to a hotel for the night to get away from the pool. Only
it’s too late. You can take Ray out of the pool, but you can’t take the pool out of Ray. He
starts choking, his veins coursing with drain juice. Eve gets him stable in bed and calls
the doc to get him in next week. For now, she has to listen to his possessed ramblings
about how ‘it’s so cool in the deep end.’ He says he just needs to go back in one more time.
Clearly, he’s lost it, he’s unstable, and not to be trusted. Eve needs to put a stone in her back
pocket to clobber him if he starts acting up.
While he rests, Eve goes back and drains the pool
into the sewer. I’m gonna take a guess and say she just released this demon into the wild. But I
thought this pool was fed by groundwater, isn’t it already able to move around about anywhere
considering groundwater is everywhere?
I think given the severity of the threat,
they need to relocate to a different state, preferably somewhere that again, doesn’t share
the same groundwater, or river access. They could simply google maps of aquifers to check. I’d
also ensure that no major rivers from our current location enter our new location. Hard to do with
rivers intersecting most major aquifers. I’m assuming this thing doesn’t travel by rain because
it’d disperse its soul too much. Like a T1000 reforming from its melted liquid droplets. Bit
risky of an assumption if this demon is hunting them like the grudge. Really, Hawaii is gonna
be your safest bet here besides going to a rainy rural area and surviving off of captured rainwater
for showers and bottled water for drinking.
Eve finally gets to Googling. She checks the
missing and unsolved mysteries database link to the Minnesota Missing persons database.
Turns out, Rebecca Summers wasn’t the only one. A lot more people lived at their same house
and went missing mysteriously. She calls Kay to find out where Summer's family is now so she can
exhume the tragic memories of their child.
The mom, Lucy Summers, is strangely welcoming.
She tells Eve all about her husband and son, both of which aren’t there. It’s quiet in
the house, too quiet. She’s also strangely fond of the pool.. Sounds like Ray. So does
her coughing. When Eve asks about Rebecca, Lucy insists she never had a daughter at all. More
coughing. Lucy starts ranting about the history of the lake that once existed there. How it required
sacrifices in order to keep on giving miracles. Lucy sacrificed her daughter so that little
Tommy could heal from his terminal illness.
Now, if you’re Eve sitting in that chair listening
to this insane story, knowing what you know about Ray’s possession. You need to 1. Get the f*ck out
of there immediately. And 2. Remove your children from Ray’s presence. You never should have left
them alone with him in the first place after he unwittingly nearly drowned a kid.
Okay.. so Ray’s screwed.
Gavin and Izzy return home without their mom
for some reason, and the kid nearly drinks a glass full of the tainted water. Luckily the
water demon was stupid enough to create some Jurassic Park ripples in it to spook Gavin off.
The kid disappoints us yet again by splitting up from his family to go in search of their cat
outside by the pool after hearing his collar bell jingle. You know, the collar that wasn’t
on the cat when it went missing. Dumb*ss.
It’s honestly physically painful witnessing
this kid blindly walk into another trap, crawling onto the rickety diving board the demon
had violently shaken above him during his previous encounter with the demon. Why would your cat even
be on a floaty in the first place? An aversion to water is one of the most well-known
characteristics of household cats.
The pool cover begins rolling over the top of
him. Luckily, Izzy and her mom rushes outside to stop the cover. Eve has Izzy run inside to call
for help while she dives in after Gavin. As if Izzy’s phone isn’t in her pocket which she could
use to dial 911 right there. Please don’t tell me you’re going to ask your clearly possessed
dad for help. Yep, that’s what she does.
This sneaky monster somehow knew
her mom would order her back inside, thus planned out a broken water glass ahead of
time. Izzy literally falls for it perfectly.
When she whips out her phone that
was in her pocket this whole time, Ray shows up just in time to bat it out
of her hands. See what I did there.
Underwater, Gavin’s nowhere, but there is a
dark hole where the drain’s supposed to be, like a gateway to the upside down. Eve
ties off a hose, grabs her flashlight, takes a deep breath, and dives in.
Oh I thought she was going to use the hose to pull herself back out or keep
herself from getting pulled in. No, she uses it for one last ditch breath of O2.
Cool. But I’d think dragging the hose in, then stopping all your momentum to snatch a breath
would be counterproductive. You’d want to dive in as streamlined as possible, trying to carry
as much speed as possible from gravity.
She finds Gavin, grabs him, then
attempts to ascend. Only problem is, there are a lot of demons that want both of
them to join them in their watery grave.
After a 3 and a half minute long breath
hold swimming voraciously while panicking and dragging the dead weight of her son,
she finally makes it to the surface.
Immensely lucky. Any of those pool demons could
have easily grabbed and pulled her under.
It’s not over yet. Ray’s come to ensure that
the water gets to have Gavin for eternity. There’s just one thing the groundwater didn’t
plan for. A teenage girl with a bat. God dang it. It’s literally going to end with a kid
beating it up with a wiffle ball bat.
Ray’s life flashes before him, his
love conquers the demon’s possession. He pukes it out. But the water requires
a sacrifice. If not Gavin for his health, then his life for Gavins. As the
water begins to take hold of Gavin, Ray dives into the deep dark end. Gavin
immediately pukes, now free from the curse.
Right.. But the family gained nothing. No miracle
was really granted for their sacrifice. It was a complete net negative.. If Ray declined the
MS treatment in order to be with his family, that should have been fine, because
he never took from the water.
Well, now they’re going to have a hard time
selling the home with their dad being under the pool and all that. Maybe you could make a new
deal, like each of you loses a limb in exchange for your dad back. Idk. I wouldn’t, this demon
clearly doesn’t give a sh*t about fairness.
They finally get around to
filling the pool. The end.
This family was given, frankly, an absurd number
of opportunities to recognize what was going on and GTFO before Ray drank the swamp juice.
For that reason, I think Night Swim was Beaten.
Moral of the story, never swim alone.
