Night Swim Ending Explained- Was The Pool Haunted Or Cursed, And The Price Of Wishes

THE BROAD STROKES

• Night Swim delivers a hellish wishing well that demands payment.
• The pool has been claiming victims for decades.
• Water can’t be stopped, only diverted, so despite the Waller’s best efforts, this cycle will continue, leaving room for future sequels.

Blumhouse and Atomic Monster’s Night Swim is not a promising start for the horror movie making house. Adapted from director Rod Blackhurst and writer Bryce McGuire’s short of the same name, Night Swim had a lot of things going for it. Wyatt Russell is hot right now, coming off of Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and Kerry Condon is always reliable. Blumhouse’s name is synonymous with horror and garners a lot of goodwill even when it isn’t necessarily warranted. Unfortunately, The mishmash of ideas that never entirely comes together tries to do too many things simultaneously, and none are particularly good.

If you strip away all the overly convoluted plot beats and obvious plot holes, there is a nugget of a story that remains that probably has you wondering, “What did I just watch?” Questions persist between the sacrifices, tragic and horrific, and the myriad of baseball references. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Night Swim: who survived and whether the pool was haunted.

Night Swim opens with a little girl trying to retrieve her sick brother’s favorite toy boat from the pool. It’s late, and she is out there alone after her mother sent the nurse away for the evening. Her brother is sick in a hospital bed connected to tubes in his room. An unseen force pushes the little girl into the pool, and something sucks her down while she struggles. She vanishes, leaving behind one single bunny slipper.

Ray Waller(Russell) and his wife Eve(Condon) have moved into the same house decades later with their two children, Izzy(Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot(Gavin Warren). Ray has Multiple Sclerosis and has retired from professional baseball, while Eve is working at the local school and finishing her degree so she can provide health insurance for the family. The family is struggling after so many years on the road, and Ray can’t quite reconcile who he is now with who he used to be. The Wallers hope the move will allow them to heal and regain their footing.

They begin using it after hiring someone to clean and service the pool. Almost immediately, strange things start happening. The cat goes missing, and the kids see weird things. Eve also has suspicions, but Ray’s health rapidly improves, and he is understandably ecstatic. Eve, however, is worried that Ray seems overly attached to the pool and has begun acting strangely. According to the hilariously self-serious pool person, their pool is fed by a natural spring that offers natural filtration and heating year-round. Ray wants to believe that, somehow, the water has healing powers. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. The part Sinister ghost story, part Poltergeist cursed land tale, and part Dark Water cautionary narrative presents a far darker truth.

The ending of Night Swim

The family has a community pool party shortly after Ray’s rapid improvement and everyone else’s uncomfortable experiences in the pool. At first, everything is great until Ray nearly drowns a boy, and Eve learns that a young girl went missing from the house in 1992. The drowning incident leaves Eve shaken, and she tries to take the family and leave, but Ray collapses and has to be brought back into the house. It seems the pool doesn’t want him to go. Dark, shadowy water from the spring invaded his body and possessed him. Ray and Elliot need to stay at the house and near the pool. No one realizes that yet, though.

Is the pool cursed, haunted, or magical?

Eve researches the natural spring and their pool and discovers many people have gone missing, dating back decades at least. The little girl who went missing was just the latest. She decides to go to the little girl’s mother’s house to question her. Once there, the woman acts oddly and, by the end, is threatening toward Eve. She explains that the spring has magical powers that will grant you your deepest wish, but it requires sacrifice. For the older woman, that sacrifice was a choice. She could have her son healthy, but she would have to give up her daughter. It’s a ridiculous Sophie’s Choice of a decision, but it becomes apparent that she is under the influence of the water which she has been drinking daily and runs through a fountain in her living room.

The sentient deep water knows what you want and picks someone to grant a wish, but only if they are willing to pay the price. The price is always death. Long ago, Indigenous people knew that water was both a curse and a blessing. Over the years, there have been countless missing people. When a health facility was over the spring water, nurses went missing. Later, when houses were over the water, others disappeared. The little girl from 1992, Rebecca, was sacrificed so her brother would be healthy. In a flashback, it is revealed her mother knew what would happen. She locked her brother in his room and ignored Rebecca’s cry for help. She willingly chose to sacrifice one child to heal another.

From this exchange, we know the water can travel anywhere and does not have to come through the pool. We also know the water can be separated from the origin and still be effective. We also know the ghosts that are trapped in the water can get out and walk around the pool. They are also capable of affecting the physical world and can move objects and push people. How it can do these things and why it started we never learn.

After Eve realizes that her family is in terrible danger, she races back to the house while Izzy and Elliot try to avoid being beaten and drowned by Ray and the pool. By this point, Ray has been completely possessed by the water and is ripping out hunks of hair and bashing in Izzy’s head. Meanwhile, Elliot was tricked into falling into the water and was sucked down into the dark water. Eve arrives and swims down to save Elliot while Izzy fights her father. Eve pulls Elliot up, thanks to Rebecca, who points the way for her. The pool wanted to disorient Eve. She had been swimming in the wrong direction, but the little girl helped her.

Most of the people who have been stuck in the water are angry that they were so easily tossed aside for another. That is probably why they now scare victims and try to assist the water. Fortunately, Rebecca was a sweet little girl who didn’t want another person to die, so she helped Eve. It also appears that the water can corrode its victims, living and dead. That is why most of them look like terrifying decayed ghosts and why Ray and Rebecca’s mother leak black water from their eyes and nose and act violently.

Why does the pool want victims?

It is a monkey’s paw in the form of a pool. Who knows why the water does what it does? We get no backstory on the origins of the spring or the first victim, only the aftermath of decades of poor decision-making. It dangles your desires in front of you and then forces you to make an impossible decision. The water wants a body and will get it one way or another. If the water’s intended victim tries to run, it chokes them from within by corrupting their body with dark forces. If the wish maker tries to leave, the same thing happens. One way or another, someone will get sucked into the supernatural deep water beneath the pool.

Night Swim is ultimately about realizing what is really important. People are not pawns to be traded for one another; the past should stay in the past. Ray sacrifices himself for his son instead of letting the pool trick someone else. Ray missed his glory days as a professional baseball player but loved his son more. When he finally realized that he was able to break the spell. He went into the water and sacrificed himself so his child would be safe. As he dipped under the surface, Elliot expelled the dark water and was saved.

Rather than allow the pool to continue its nefarious ways, the remaining Wallers fill it with dirt. Although that may protect their backyard, it does nothing for the rest of the town fed by the spring. We know from the pool serviceman that many pools in town are fed from the same spring. Additionally, Rebecca’s mother has a fountain with the water running in her house. After all those years and relocating away from the pool, she was still controlled by the water.

It seems to enjoy maintaining control over its victims and racking up numbers, so it is unlikely to stop just because the pool has been filled in. You can divert water, but you cannot eliminate it entirely. The water will pop up in someone else’s pool or water lines, so a Night Swim sequel is possible. There is no post-credit or final scare scene to corroborate that, though.

Ray’s sacrifice allowed Elliot to understand his father loved him. The Waller’s decision to remain in the house was probably both practical and wishful. Finally, it would be disastrous to try and sell a house that quickly after buying it and with as much weird history as it had. They probably hoped to stay close to Ray. Rebecca communicated with Elliott and Eve, so it stands to reason the Wallers might be able to talk to Ray through the water pipes.

Night Swim isn’t a masterpiece, but there are enough ideas that something will appeal to you. In the film’s final act, I wanted to yell, “Swing away!”. Instead, all I could say was “Swing and a miss”. Be careful what you wish for. Night Swim is in theaters today.