Night Swim (2024)

Episode 389, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Podcast

Todd: .Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, we’re taking a bit of a break from werewolves right now to, uh, dive into the water. I guess, is it the beginning of summer that is a fast approaching that inspired you to have us watch this movie, Craig? The movie we’re watching, by the way, is called Night Swim.

It couldn’t be much more recent. 2024. Yeah, it just 

Craig: came out. Yeah. It just came out like at the time of this recording, I think it, it premiered on Peacock like a week ago or something. Yeah. The reason I was inspired to do this is because I had heard of this movie before it came out. I’m pretty sure I saw a trailer and I thought.

What a silly premise for a movie. Haunted swimming pool. But I want to see it. A haunted swimming pool. And yes, summer is coming up. And I love the water. I just absolutely love the water. Yeah, me too. Growing up, my grandparents, who lived precisely a block away from us, had a swimming pool. With a nice big privacy fence all around it.

And we lived there in the summer. That’s just where we were. We were in the pool. Young people today may or may not have a similar experience, but my parents and my aunts and uncles all had kids young. Because that’s what you did back in the day, you know, like you got married in your early twenties and you started popping out kids like it’s, it’s very different these days, but my parents and my aunts and uncles were young and they still enjoyed getting together and having fun by themselves together and it was just.

A nice coincidence that there was a swimming pool that 

Todd: they could just 

Craig: send the hundreds. I say hundreds, I’m exaggerating. But there were a lot of us, a lot of kids. And, you know, go to the pool. 

Todd: Go to the pool, stop bothering us. 

Craig: Yeah, and we did, and it was amazing. And I remember, I remember swimming at night.

Even if this is the pool that you have been swimming in, like, your whole life that you can remember, at night, you can still convince yourself that there’s, like, sharks in the deep end. And we did. And my sister and I also were, like, super dramatic, and when we would play, we would do, like, Imaginative play, like we would create scenarios for ourselves and then like act them out.

Uh huh. Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe Such as? Well, one of them was in the pool. We had this, this story where there was like a sea serpent? I think it was like a snake. I remember its name was Sandusky. 

Todd: Were you vacationing in Ohio or something? What was this all about? No, 

Craig: no, it was just in the pool, just in grandpa and grandma’s pool.

Fair enough. And there’s a sea serpent named Sandusky and, and we would, you know, like. Kristen would get like, it would get her and I would have to like, pull her to save her. Sandusky’s 

Todd: got my leg. 

Craig: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So I like pools. I like swimming. I thought this movie looked stupid, but in a way that I was really intrigued by like, well, yeah, I want to see them pull off a haunted swimming pool movie.

And as soon as I started watching it, because you and I hadn’t planned, This I texted you and I was like, I started watching this movie five minutes and I knew it was a movie. We need this. This is what we’re doing. Fair enough. So either you’re welcome or I’m sorry. I don’t know yet. 

Todd: Well, it’s not getting the best of reviews right now.

That’s for sure. I am also a swimmer like you are. In fact, I know my experiences. I would grew up on a mill in a military family and about half of the places we lived as we moved around. Had swimming pools, like the Air Force base usually has a swimming pool. That’s really popular often to one for the officers, one for the enlisteds.

That’s probably changed by now, but, uh, swimming was a very popular thing for us to do in the summer. I pretty much remember whether or not we lived on base. We were at that base pool almost every single day during the summer when school was out. And so much so that I was enrolled in the swim team. Never did I go to a school that was big enough or rich enough to have a swim team.

But, uh, I was on the community swim team pretty much every summer from the time I was, yeah, four or something like that. I see that. You’re, you’re tall and lean. I wasn’t, I wasn’t very good. I, I didn’t really win big accolades. I wasn’t super fast, but you know, I got pretty good at swimming. I’m very, very confident, comfortable in the water.

Later on in life, I got scuba certified. And so I’m, you know, one of the most, most important things for me, for my son is that he is a confident swimmer. I feel like everybody. Needs that skill just as a general life survival skill, you know, if you can’t swim then being around the waters is potentially dangerous And so in that way, well, there’s a lot of horror that happens in the water, you know, we’ve got the Jaws movies Right.

What was that one where the people were sort of stranded out? It always ends up being sort of man against nature or sort of situational situa you know, kind of. 

Craig: Oh, oh, open water. 

Todd: Open water Yeah, where you’re stuck in the middle of nothing and then there are potential sharks or there’s just the potential that nobody’s gonna come To get you so you’ve got to survive.

And aside from those kind of movies, the only other film I could think of as I was watching this was Lady in the Water. The M. Night Shyamalan movie. Oh, right, right, sure. Did you ever see that? Yeah. It took place in a backyard pool at an apartment complex, but there was a little bit more going on than just the pool.

But it was I guess you could say kind of a horror, more of a fantasy really. It was goofy as hell. 

Craig: Yeah, most people didn’t like it. I, I, I did. Like, I watched it with my whole family. My parents, my sister, and Alan. We all sat and watched it together. And all of them thought it was the dumbest thing they’d ever seen.

I was like, I liked 

Todd: it. 

Craig: I didn’t hate 

Todd: it. I didn’t hate on it like everybody else did. By the end of it I thought, okay, there was a little bit of pretension there, like when he cast himself as a writer that was gonna save the world. You could tell he was, he was pretty high on his game and didn’t really mind doing that kind of thing, and I think that that was half of why people were turned off by it.

And the other half I think people were turned off by it was it just felt so convoluted and strange. But to me, that’s what fairy tales are, you know, to me, it felt like a fairy tale that he was in. It was right. A fairy tale. He was spinning for his daughter. And so I was able to buy that this movie. I was really interested to see how they could pull off a haunted swimming pool because.

Sort of just like Jaws, it’s like, well, if the swimming pool’s haunted, don’t go swimming. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Right. Problem solved there, right? 

Craig: Or drain it or something. 

Todd: Right, but 

Craig: they do. I mean, they don’t realize, they don’t realize that it’s haunted right away. Right. 

Todd: So I was really curious to see, you know, how they would do with a haunted swimming pool.

And they, they did about as much as they possibly could. I mean, any, anything pool related. Any of your phobias, any of the games you would play, pool parties, you name it, it’s thrown into this movie, right? So, uh. I know. 

Craig: Yeah. God, that’s, that’s just also, like, so this family, there’s an open, cold open that we need to talk about, but this family, you know, they’re looking for a new place to live, the dad was a professional baseball player, but he has MS, and it’s, you know, ravaging his body, and so they’re looking for a new place to live, and they, End up finding this place with a pool and that’s, it’s so funny to me because the dad’s like, there’s a pool about it because he needs the, the doctors told him that water therapy would be one thing that would help him.

Yeah. He’s been diagnosed with like early stage at 

Todd: mass. 

Craig: Yeah. Which is a. Devastating 

Todd: disease. Horrifying. I’ve known a couple people. It’s actually 

Craig: terrible. 

Todd: Yeah. Before the family gets into the picture, we do get a flashback to summer 1992, right? Yeah. Where there’s another family at the pool. There’s a young little Asian girl and a boy who we never quite see his face.

But he’s 

Craig: in a hospital bed. He’s in 

Todd: a hospital bed in the house, yeah. She’s out by the pool, it’s night time, and she sees a toy boat floating around out there, which must belong to him. And so she kind of runs upstairs and to his back, Hey, Tony, I’m gonna get that, your toy boat out of the pool. She runs back downstairs by herself.

She’s a little girl, God, what is she, maybe, is she eight, maybe? Eight or nine? Seven, yeah. Seven, maybe? Just real small. Like, please do not let your little kids out and around your pool late at night with no supervision. Oh! She goes out and she tries to fish the boat outta the water. All kinds of fishy things are happening, right?

Like the boat’s kind of moving away from her and it sinks to the bottom and she uses the pool net thing on the extender to try to get it out. She tries to reach and she can’t quite scrape it up from the bottom and she ends up falling in. 

Craig: Well, something yanks it. Yeah, she doesn’t, I mean, the, the movie teases like her feet are just.

Teetering on the edge of the pool like the movie teases that she’s gonna fall in but she doesn’t just fall No, something yanks on the skimmer that she’s using and then she’s in there. Yeah 

Todd: She goes in there to fish out the toy boat and then we get some some scenery that we’re gonna get a lot of shots of and in a lot of times in this movie where I couldn’t tell whether the pool was haunted or the pool and outside the pool was also haunted You know, they were a little fast and loose with some of that, because I really liked the idea that when she was underwater and she was looking up, she thought she saw her mom by the side.

And then when she comes out of the water, her mom’s not there. Like, nobody’s there. And so that freaks her out a little bit. The lights in the pool flicker on and off. As she’s turning around, you also kind of see behind her, there’s a figure on the diving board, just some very dark figure. But she doesn’t see it, and then she’s pulled under and completely disappears, the lights flicker when they come on, we see she’s just completely vanished.

Craig: And that’s important, it’s important to the story later, you know, I watched this movie a week ago, and then I was like, uh, maybe I better put it on again. And I’m glad that I did because I wouldn’t have remembered a lot of it. And this is one of those things that watching it again, I was like, Oh yeah. Well now I remember that that was important, like this establishes a lot of stuff.

They find this house and it has a pool and I don’t know about you, but to me, a pool is like the highest symbol of. Like, prestige. Prestige. Yeah. You 

Todd: know you’ve made it. 

Craig: If you have a pool, you’ve made it. An in ground pool, not one of those above ground things. No, no, no. It’s gotta be in ground. No, I would happily swim in one of those above ground pools, but it is not the same.

Well, 

Todd: you gotta have money for an underground pool, I’ll tell you that, because my parents have one, and it has probably been the biggest money suck of their whole house. There’s always some maintenance that needs to be done. Yeah. And that whole thing’s been drained at least twice to patch things up, and And then the filtration system went out once and she, you know, I mean, anything can go wrong with this thing when you leave on vacation.

If your filtration system breaks down or stops, you come back to something green and then you’re dumping chemicals in it and going back and forth to the pool place to test the water to get it right. And sometimes you just got to drain it and try again. I mean, yeah. Oh my god, it’s a nightmare. It made me believe that even when I am at the height of presti Well, I guess if I’m at the height of prestige and somebody else can mess with all that stuff for me, I’ll take a pool.

Clip: That’s what I was gonna say! 

Craig: I 

Todd: was 

Craig: gonna say, so, you need a pool and a pool boy.

And I’ll take it. But, I totally agree with you. My, the pool that I was talking about that I grew up with, my grandpa, it’s still in his backyard. He’s like, 85 or I don’t know. It’s been closed for 10 years. It just sits there empty because he’s like, I’m not messing with it. But anyway, okay, so this family, the dad who we’ve already talked about, used to be a professional baseball player, has MS and is struggling.

I hate to just sweep by that because one of my family members has MS. There, you know, we know lots of people that we love. I say people we love. I mean famous people that don’t know us and that will never know us, but like Christina Applegate, Selma Blair, lots of other people struggling with MS and it’s just a terrible, terrible debilitating disease.

So I don’t want to make light of that, but. He is played, his name is Ray, and he’s played by Wyatt Russell, who is the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. Yeah. And I see both of them in him so much. He is the perfect blend of the two of them. Like, ha, ha, 

Todd: ha, ha. It’s spooky. 

Craig: And I love them both. Like, I just absolutely adore the both of them.

And I love that they just have this unconventional romance where they’ve been together for decades, but they’re not married, right? Love it. I like him in this movie and his wife Eve is played by Carrie Condon. I saw that she had been in other things. She’s in the Marvel universe. I, she plays, she’s a voice actress for a character that’s been in multiple Marvel movies.

She’s great too. And then they have two kids. I don’t remember what their names are, boy and girl, whatever, who cares. Izzy is the girl, and Elliot, though they call Ellie as the boy. And they’re cute, they’re just a nice family, and they are looking for a place to live, and the one person that I recognized most from this movie was their realtor.

Did you recognize him? 

Todd: I said oh my god that woman she’s been in everything known to man I went back to her IMDB and she’s got like a probably close to 200 credits and every single TV show I think I’ve ever heard of from the 80s on she’s had at least one role to play in it for an episode or two. 

Craig: The thing that I remember her distinctly from is she was the waitress, the waitress.

In the great outdoors, when John Candy ate the old 96’er, like the 96’er steak, and oh god, she was so funny, and the wife in that movie’s like, has anybody ever done it? And the waitress is like, oh no, oh no, not in my lifetime. That was her! And I loved it. Oh, man. You know, we’re, we’re, we’re skirting around plot because there’s not a whole lot of, the pool is haunted.

Todd: The pool’s haunted. 

Craig: So I don’t know what, what, what happens? Well, the cat goes missing. The cat, 

Todd: the cat sighter, which is the cutest name for a cat. I’m actually gonna, I’m actually made a mental note for that one in a, for a future cat possibility. No, when, when they’re looking at the pool before they even end up taking the place.

He notices a baseball floating around in there, an old baseball that’s kind of falling apart. His first experience with the pool is falling in as he’s trying to grab the baseball, and he gets caught up in the tarp that’s on the pool. It’s like a pool cover that, again, the pool hasn’t been used. We learn later that the previous family hadn’t used the pool for like 15 years because Yeah, so why is there water in it?

Yeah, right? Good 

Craig: question. Okay, whatever. 

Todd: So anyway, yeah, he falls in, and while he’s in there, he’s struggling, and you don’t think he’s gonna make it out, because of that frickin tarp. Plus, you know, he has MS, and he has this vision of himself playing baseball while he’s down there, and hitting his home run.

That kind of comes into play later, I think. It’s really interesting how, again, like, he tried to do what they could with the pool, so what can happen when you’re in a pool? Well, you can look up and you can see things mercally through the water that may or may not be there. You can kind of be thrashing around and possibly drown.

You can have visions while you’re under there, you know? You can sink to the bottom and You know, so like, uh, we gotta get all that here in the beginning, we know all the standard dangers of the pool, and even the danger of falling in when the cover is on it, you know, sort of comes into play later as well, so.

Craig: Didn’t we see another movie one time where somebody murdered somebody in that way? Like, they threw them in the pool, and then they, 

Todd: like, 

Craig: closed. I’m almost positive. Was 

Todd: that, um, 

Craig: Trick or Treat? That really shitty I don’t know. It was somebody’s, it was somebody’s mother. Like, like some woman killed somebody else’s mother by throwing her in the pool.

I’m 

Todd: pretty sure it was that shitty Trick or Treat movie that was, uh, that was filmed in that famous person’s backyard. I don’t know, who cares. Is that how the woman died in House on Sorority Row, or did they just end up throwing the body in the pool? There was a lot of pool stuff in that one, too.

Remember that? Uh huh. Yeah, the sea pig. Yeah. Go back and listen to that episode if you hadn’t heard it. And also what I was thinking of was the terrifying pool scene in Burnt Offerings. 

Craig: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now that you just even just said that, I’m like, I almost feel like there’s a scene in this movie that almost feels like a callback to that.

Todd: Yeah, because kind of what happens is it’s like what happens in all these movies where a family buys an old house. Like, the dad ends up turning evil, right? Right. Like slowly, but surely gosh, but it was the mom. Wasn’t it the mom? 

Craig: No, 

Todd: in that 

Craig: one, it was both of them. I don’t, both of them got, yeah, but the father was, yeah, but the dad, yeah.

He, he almost drowned the kid and there’s a scene in this movie that’s kind of like that. Okay. So, so they, they buy the house. Yep. And they clean out the pool, they totally drain it, and they clean it out, and the dad is cleaning out the drain, and he gets a big gash in his hand. What? Don’t reach deep into a drain full of dirty, gross water.

No, you gotta be careful. And, and, big gash in his hand, and of course I thought, okay, well, you know, like, he’s bleeding into this thing. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know if that even had anything to do with anything, but it’s just setting things off in my mind. Like, all right, like he’s connected to the pool or something.

I don’t know. And as soon as that happens, all this black sludge comes up out of the pool, kind of almost to fill it. Right. It comes up very quickly out of the drain. And so they call a pool guy, and I love this, I love 

Todd: this, this is a comical part of the movie, yeah, for sure, 

Craig: so funny, this stupid, this stupid, goofy, goofy ass pool guy, tells them, oh, I’ve never seen this before, I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it before, like, your pool is fed by a natural stream, spring, 

Todd: yeah, 

Craig: spring fed, yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Todd: yeah.

And he’s like, yeah, that’s the great thing about spring fed pools is they’re constantly fed, they’re natural, they don’t need all the filtration and all that stuff, the chemicals and things, I had to look this up because I thought, I 

Craig: was hoping you did because I didn’t. 

Todd: Is it a real thing? Alright, a spring fed pool is a real thing, but a spring fed pool is like literally kind of a pool on a spring, which this could kind of be if they also decided to concrete over it?

Like, it’s not gonna look like a backyard pool. Where the drain it just like has water coming up and then also this natural filtration he’s talking about is because you will have like wildlife in your pool like you might plant some some seaweed in there and you’ll probably have fish swimming around in there I mean everything I looked up that showed photos of these spring fed pools it looks like a spring That, you know, they put a nice concrete area around and some ladders into and stuff, and a diving board and you know, so it kind of looks like a pool, but the water’s green, so it’s a thing.

But I don’t think people are likely to have this in their backyard disguised as just a plain old in-ground pool with all of the accoutrement that comes with it. Including, oh yeah. Including those flappy drains on the side and the drain on the bottom and stuff like that. So, 

Craig: yeah, I mean this, this is a backyard pool.

It doesn’t look, no, there’s nothing that would suggest to. To you that there was anything special about it. It’s just a backyard pool, but it’s got to be important 

Todd: for the lore because suddenly this guy gets very philosophical and he, he just stands there with his leg on the diving board and just kind of stares off into space.

And it’s like, 

Clip: it’s funny, isn’t it though? I mean, we evolved out of the water and some part of our reptilian brain knows we’re not supposed to be there anymore, but I guess that’s why we try to tame it so hard. Yeah. It’s like trying to conquer death. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you okay? God, sorry. Butterfingers.

Alright, 

Todd: well here’s your invoice. Oh well, you know, that’ll be 150. Like, what the hell?! I thought it was so funny! It’s in our reptile brains. I’m sorry, but it was just a little too shoehorned in there. It’s not the first time in this movie where there’s gonna be a bit of goofiness that feels like, Oh, come on.

Craig: Ahh! Get your eyes 

Todd: out. 

Craig: Yeah, it’s funny because, So I watched this the first time last week and I was excited to do it. And then a week went by and I put it on again. I was like, why 

Todd: were you, are you saying your second experience? This movie was very different from your first. 

Craig: I think it’s just because. The first time around I was just like soaking it in like this is fun like go to haunted pool fun and then the second time I’m like I’ve already seen it so there are no surprise right and so I’m kind of like poking holes in it so I I I don’t want to discourage people from watching it you probably shouldn’t listen any further in this podcast I want to watch it because we’ll spoil everything and then it won’t be fun like yeah the the the second time I watched it I was like well.

I’ve already seen it, and it’s not that great, so. Yeah. It’s not a bad movie, I don’t think. I actually enjoyed the character performances, all of them. The whole family, I thought they all did a great job. 

Todd: I was on board with this family. I thought the acting was great. I thought the situations were very believable.

You know, this dad with his His major league baseball career getting cut short, but you know He’s dreaming and he’s trying his best to fight it and the family’s rallying behind him and they’re doing all they can you know and the reason they buy the house is the pool because the doctor says Swimming is the best thing you can do.

It’s a low impact sport that can help in your recovery And so yeah, like this whole situation Everything was quite believable and I was really behind it all and he does start recovering quite rapidly Right, and it and it’s very obvious. Yeah, there’s something about the pool Well, he He 

Craig: unwraps his hand like, uh, yeah, a day later, the next day.

Yeah. He had that huge gash in his hand, but in the meantime, he’s been in the pool and he like one day later, he takes it off. Perfectly healed. I also thought that that was hilarious because you said you swam a lot. Do you remember that? That’s true. Like a huge gash in your hand is not going to heal in one day, but the chlorine in the pool would make cuts and scrapes.

Heal so fast. 

Todd: Yeah, I do. I do. They were just always a little different right when you came out of the pool It’s almost like your body I guess it’s you know Whenever you shower it kind of wets that scab down and it kind of sloughs off and then almost reveals your wound all over again But when you’re swimming in a pool and it’s never really had a chance to scab over it It does seem to have some kind of different effect.

Yeah, you’re right, 

Craig: but whatever I mean, it’s obvious something supernatural is going on because not only did it heal his hand, but it is You He was pretty frail when they moved in. And as soon as he starts Swimming in the pool, which he loves, and like, can’t stop talking about it, like, he is wet for this pool, 

Todd: oh my god, everyone, everyone is wet for this pool, now seriously, and maybe this is just my own personal experience, my parents, bless their heart, they have this big beautiful pool, and this big beautiful house in Arizona, and almost never gets used, like, the amount of times they’re in there, And when I’m, I’m over there, I, I’m trying to get in the pool just every once in a while.

I don’t get out there all the time because I got to pull the pool cover back or the temperature might not be right and they’re discouraging me from it. Man, these guys are, their lives are now revolving around that pool. They’re in it every day. They’re like, Hey dad, can you, can you toss coins in for me to dive in and get after?

Craig: But weird, weird shit is happening. Like they do that. They do the diving for coins thing when they’re all together in the day and it’s cool. Yeah. And we did that too. I mean, we dove for coins or little plastic McDonald’s toys or whatever was fun. Loved it. They do it. Then they also have like individual like, okay, so the mom does laps at night one night.

And she thinks she sees the husband standing there, but then when she comes up, he’s gone. Yeah. This happens to all of them at least once, right? Yeah. And the boy wants to swim after school one day and the mom’s like, you can’t swim alone. Good mom. Yeah. Get your dad. Not good dad. Because the dad, I feel like this is something that they started in the movie and then they didn’t really follow through.

I think that this felt like kind of an Amityville thing where he was getting haunted and what was what was motivating him was his Thought about getting back to base into baseball. Yeah, I think you’re right because like he’s videotaping himself and that kid walks in And a videotape is playing And it’s the dad talking about, yeah, I’m, I’m really getting back into better shape and I just wanted you to see, it’s, it’s almost like he’s going to send this video to team.

Todd: Yeah. It seems like, like a recruitment video or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But the movie doesn’t follow through with it. Not really. It doesn’t have time for that. We got, we got to deal with the haunted pool first. 

Craig: Right, right. Okay. So, so the kid says, dad, can you come swim with me? And the dad hands him the jar of coins and says, nah, you know, just stay in the shallow end or whatever.

He gives him one quarter with a smiley face drawn on it. He says, throw that in the deep end and I’ll, I’ll come get it. But don’t you go to the deep end. Right. So the kid goes, and I can’t tell if he’s really staying in the shallow end or whatever, like, our parents did that too, they were like, stay in the shallow and we’ll be inside drunk.

My mom would die if she ever heard that. She won’t, because she doesn’t listen to the podcast, and to be fair, not her. Not my mom, but my aunts and uncles. 

Todd: That’s hilarious. 

Craig: Oh my god. 

Todd: It was a different time. 

Craig: It was a totally different, and we were fine. I mean, there were some near drowning, but nobody ever drowned.

Well, 

Todd: those of us who are here to talk 

Craig: about it are perfectly fine. My god, that pool had a slide in the shallow end. A big slide. It said on the stairs, like as you were crawling up, like, Do not put this in the show.

There were some injuries, more than one person was injured. But it sure was fun. Um, okay. So anyway, the kid’s in there and he’s hearing things. He thinks he hears his dad, more coins get thrown in the pool, even though there’s nobody else around. He thinks he sees his dad up there, I think, but then he hears.

This voice and he thinks he sees a girl. I keep saying thinks he sees, we’re just looking through his eyes through the water, so everything is, you know, kind of wavy and you can’t really tell what you’re looking at and he thinks he sees a girl and then he comes up and he thinks this is his sister and messing around with him or whatever, but then he hears a voice.

In the pool skimmer. Yeah, yeah. And then it is basically exactly the Georgie scene. From it. From it. Yep. 

Todd: Completely ripped up. I’ve, even down to, I found your toy and it’s a boat. Oh no, this is, his is a doll. I’m sorry. He has taped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He kind of like glued the, the smiley face coin to the doll and he pulls the doll out.

And he can see a little girl figure and action figure. Yeah, sorry. Action figure. 

Clip: Let’s get 

Todd: it right. Little he man and there’s girl’s hair attached to it. And as he pulls it out, a hand reaches out to try to grab him and pull him in. And he flips. He also has a bit to do with the diving board. I think when he’s under the diving board, it’s banging and he feels like there’s something.

Yeah, 

Craig: there’s, there’s definitely somebody on there, but then when he. Pulls himself up. There’s not somebody there. Yeah, 

Todd: the 

Craig: pool’s haunted. Yeah 

Todd: He’s basically sorted that out. I think his sis his sister. No, maybe it’s later that his sister gets freaked out, too 

Craig: Yeah, we okay. Okay. Yeah, I feel like we just need to hit major plot points at the yeah Yeah at some point the sister has a boy Ronin that she’s interested in over when the parents aren’t Home and they swim together and it’s cute.

They’re teenagers, you know, they’re flirty or whatever and they’re playing Marco Polo But at some point I guess time just freezes for the boy because he doesn’t remember any of this happening but she Starts to hear weird. She’s got her eyes closed and she never opens them, which I think is ridiculous, right?

As soon as I started hearing weird voices, my eyes would be wide open, but you know, I guess, you know, she’s a rule follower. And, um, so. She’s calling Marco, and these weird voices are responding to her, and it’s a lot of spooky stuff that happens, but eventually some, like, fat pool monster guy, like, starts interacting with her.

I was honestly kind of confused by this at the first, like, The first time that I watched it, I didn’t then ultimately understand what I understand now. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: This pool is haunted, but it’s not haunted by a single entity. It’s not like there’s one pool ghost. There are lots of pool ghosts. 

Clip: Yes. 

Craig: And they can show up and mess with you.

And this one happens to be An overweight bald man covered in algae. I 

Todd: sort of figured when I saw him that he was kind of bloated. He looked like he, you know, like when people are dead in the water. At that point I sorted out, okay, so we’re going to be seeing all the ghosts of people who’ve previously died in the pool.

We had the little girl, we had this big bloated guy. That’s probably what’s happening. It pulls her down and at this point the pool just starts to seem super deep and dark. So that’s another thing that kind of happens. 

Craig: This, yeah, this is where it’s established that the pool can become, like, an infinite, the pool is just like a, like a portal to like this infinite underwater place.

Yeah. Which is kind of cool. And she gets out of it. What’s the next major plot point? The pool party, 

Todd: right? Uh, yeah, well, the two brother and sister chat with each other and sort out that, you know, the pool’s probably haunted. But they don’t want to tell their parents because they don’t want to move again.

Clip: Things have been better since we moved here. I mean, dad’s healthier, mom’s happy. Do you want to freak them out just so we have to move again? What makes more sense? That the pool’s helping us or that it’s haunted? What if it’s both? 

Craig: And I, I don’t know, I, I, I may be wrong, but I feel like we failed to mention the ghost that the boy saw in the pool was that young Asian girl that we saw in the beginning of the movie.

Yep, yep. And her name is Rebecca and she’s looking for her mother. She’s 

Todd: a sweet ghost. She’s the ghost who, even though he kind of freaked him out, she’s the helpful ghost. She’s Casper. Yeah, 

Craig: her story ultimately is very tragic, but we’re not there yet. Pool party, right? Pool party? Yeah. So they have a pool party because the boy is having difficulty making friends, even though his dad went to his little league practice.

And showed off like it went out of the park that was hilarious okay so he’s he’s helping the boys he’s coaching the boys on their hitting that’s cute that’s great good job dad but then the coach and I get this I am I’m being too hard on them the coach is like well we’ve got a professional baseball player here you wanna you wanna hit a couple and he’s like I don’t know I think he strikes on the first one.

And then on the second one, he, like, falls down, and everybody’s super concerned about him, as they should be. He has MS. At the beginning of this movie, he could barely walk. The doctors told him, be in a wheelchair. 

Todd: Yeah. And he just totally ignored that. You have to be very careful with physically exerting yourself when you’re in a, uh, when you’re 

Craig: Right!

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Right. But, then On the final swing, he hits Was that all CGI? That whole thing had to be CGI, right? It’s a slow mo of the bat hitting the ball, and the ball just 

Todd: Shatters. 

Craig: Being obliterated. Yeah. Like, it splits the seams, and it Does that happen? It 

Todd: happens in movies. I don’t know if that could possibly happen in real life.

Unless you have the shittiest ball that’s held together with twine in the first place. 

Craig: I have to say, it looked pretty cool. It looked 

Todd: cool, but you could see what they were doing there, right? I mean, first of all, it was his vision that he had had when he was in the pool that he kind of visualizes that makes him hit that ball.

And then that ball now has the shape. Of that ball that he had fished out of the pool that was super old. And I’m like, whoa, are we going to get into some weird time loop thing here? Like I wasn’t sure if that was going to come back or not. And it did, but in a very non significant way, just later at the pool party, a kid hands him a ball to sign.

And he signs it and he happens to notice, Oh, this is just like the ball that I fished out of the pool, was it? 

Craig: Yeah, and that kid is the coach’s kid. Yep. And the dad is like, Hey, steroid Shrek thinks he owns the pool. Come help me take him out. So there’s this big guy who has a kid on his shoulders who’s playing like chicken in the pool.

And so the dad takes this kid and they’re playing chicken and it was very awkward. Yeah. I vaguely remember playing chicken. I don’t, but this just seemed weird. Like it was two giant men. With boys on their back. Like, what are these boys supposed to do? I, I don’t really understand. You’re 

Todd: supposed to slap each other around or something.

I don’t know. Yeah. Push on each other. It was weird, like one’s trying to push the other off the shoulder. I think. 

Craig: Yeah, I, I mean, that’s the point of the game, but when I, when I remember playing that game, like we were all kind of the same side. Oh yeah. We didn’t have a little tiny child on your back. True , like, what’s the child supposed to do?

Like we were all the same size, so there was leverage and stuff. Yeah. Whatever. So stupid Doesn’t matter. So the dad gets this kid on his back and they’re, they’re, you know, the boys are like slapping at each other and trying to push each other over or whatever, but they keep edging back, back, back further towards the deep end.

And eventually, the kid who’s on the dad’s back wins. He knocks the other kid off and he’s like celebrating, but the dad keeps backing into the deep end to the point where the kid, they’re both completely submerged and the kid is saying, let me go, let me go. Yeah. And I think that the sludge comes up out of the drain, comes up around the dad, goes into, like, inside him, like, in his nose, like, his eyes turn black.

He had been kind of holding onto the kid the whole time, but then he, like, locks in. The kid’s dad has to jump in and pull him out, and they’re both in bad shape. Yeah. Both of them survive, but Now, the neighbors don’t like him. 

Todd: The neighbors hate him now. You better not come out to practice anymore. Like, man, they have no forgiveness in them.

Craig: But the realtor was also at that party, and she later reassures the wife, Oh, don’t worry. Later, you know, people forget these kinds of things. It’ll be fun. Because the pool party was a huge hit! I’m telling you, like, if you’ve got a pool, you are like the coolest. Like, everybody wants to be your friend. And so it was a big hit.

At the party, the realtor also confessed. Cause the, the mom was like, Come on, be serious. There’s something not right about this pool. And the realtor’s like, I swear to God, I didn’t even know about it until after I told I sold you the house. But yeah, a little girl drowned in the pool. The pool and she said, I don’t know why that would keep people from using a perfectly good pool and I agree with her entirely.

I also agree with her, except for the fact that it’s haunted, but then the wife ends up going, she does research and she learns that. It wasn’t just that little girl. It wasn’t just Rebecca, like lots of people, lots of people have just disappeared. 

Todd: And if the photos she’s coming up are to believe it’s all the way back to like the 1800s, like people would pioneer dress, you know, and like, I guess the newspapers of the time, it’s pretty hokey.

I was like, okay, all right, well, we’ll go with it. I 

Craig: liked it. 

Todd: I mean, I’m always down for some research. Don’t fix what ain’t broken. And it’s. Yeah, 

Craig: but okay. So she goes, she eventually, she gets, I don’t know. The realtor helps her find out where the last family is now. And she goes and talks to the mom, Rebecca’s mom, who seems to be doing very well financially.

She says that her son is doing very well. And the mom is like, well, what about your daughter? And at first she’s like, No, I don’t have a daughter, just a son. But then It’s exposition time. Rebecca’s mother, I have no idea how she knows this. I don’t either. 

Todd: Well, she first calls it, so what she says is, I know it gives us our deepest desires.

It’s Temagami. Which means the deep water. And when she’s talking, and she’s Asian, so I was thinking, Temagami sounds very Japanese to me. I looked it up later, and it’s actually native, because this takes place in Canada, and it’s native to Canada. It’s an Algonquin word. So, so yeah, I mean, that tracks, but I was very confused at first.

I thought, is this a Japanese ghost that has possessed this pool, and so this Asian lady’s going to tell us all about the secrets of the Orient? But no, it’s, it’s possessed water, is basically what it is. And someone has to pay so that the water can keep giving the way that it gave to me. Yes. Tommy was so sick and look at him now.

So basically this woman knowingly, I guess, sacrificed her daughter to the pool so that her son could get well. And that’s really sad and sick. 

Craig: It is. And I, I don’t want to expose my ignorance by saying that, gosh, I’ll just not. I feel like. Male children in Asian culture are, are, yeah, 

Todd: okay, that’s, that’s all I’m saying, I don’t want to go in.

Well, I live in China and that is 100 percent the way it is, has been here for many years. 

Craig: Yeah, this mother, her son, her older son was sick. And she had to make a sacrifice and now he’s healthy, happy, wildly successful, and she seems 

Todd: okay 

Craig: with it. 

Todd: What I love about this scene is how now just all water is possessed and spooky.

I know! 

Craig: She has, she has a fountain, a beautiful fountain in her house. And then also like just pouring water out of a pitcher into, The glass and the water is like rippling and stuff. And I, and I feel like the mom, the main mom, like notices these things and notices that like, ah, the water is evil. And this woman at the end of her tail starts like weeping the black water from the pool and it’s like coming out of her eyes and it’s coming out of her nose and out of her mouth.

And she turns and looks at the mom and says something really creepy like, 

Clip: It’ll be over soon.

The water will sleep again. And

someone else will find the house. Someone else who needs it’s 

Todd: help. And when she’s saying this, we’re getting, like, visuals of nature and the actual spring before the pool was in there, so, again, it’s really hard for me to buy that this was this huge, almost lake, you know, that we see in this image, in this big forested area, that then This whole neighborhood got built up around it, and somebody just, like, one person built, like, a pool with a I mean, it just I I I felt like, you know, to be honest with you, I was really on board with the movie up until the last act.

And the last act got so goofy and so silly that I just all I could do was laugh at it at that 

Craig: point. The dad goes totally Amityville. Like, I feel like they cut away from the mom, like, leaving, like, she knows something’s wrong, like, they’ve gotta do something, and it cuts to the dad in the shower, and he’s having, like, a fit, like, he’s convulsing, and, like, the black water is, like, pouring out of his eyes, and it’s, like, you can see the black water, like, running through his veins.

Like, he’s just totally possessed. 

Todd: And the mom is driving in the car frantically trying to get home and she pulls her phone out to try to call people, but water has manifested in her bag where her phone was. I was like, what? What? Is just water all possessed now? Or like, ugh, it was so funny. So, yeah. So she couldn’t call, her phone was dead.

So she gets home and then I think this right is just when everything is all hell breaks loose. Those water, black water is bubbling back outta the pool. Oh. ’cause the mom had drained the pool, right? They, she drained the pool. Yeah. 

Craig: Right. But then it filled itself back up. Mm-Hmm. . And the kid, the, the, the little boy gets lured out there.

He hears the cat, which the cat disappeared a long time ago. Yeah. Like the pool ate it. We know that, but they don’t. This poor boy, who’s so 

Todd: scared of the pool, now is suddenly not is okay with walking around looking for his cat. 

Craig: Well, I get it. He was worried about his cat and he heard it. And he thought, like, there’s like a huge, like, flamingo floatie on the pool and it sounds like the cat is On there, but when he touches it and turns it around, the cat is not on there and then somehow he gets pulled into the pool and pulled down and the pool cover starts supernaturally closing and the mom and the sister run out and they are like, they’re fighting the ghost.

Trying to, and they do, they, you know, they eventually, it takes both of them, they eventually get it to stop, and then the mom just like stomps the handle so it’s jammed, or whatever, but she dives in there, can’t find the kid, he’s not in there anymore. She’s got a tether hose, right? Well, I, she, Does she see that there’s like an opening in the bottom?

I think that she does. 

Todd: I think after she’s been in there once she kind of looks down and sees that there’s more to it and she’s going to need to go deep and so then she gets the garden hose and ties it to the yeah to the diving board and I’m like what’s possessed and what’s not all right so this pool Can throw pennies in from outside the pool.

People can manifest on the diving board. The diving board can do shit. The pool cover can move back and forth, but it can’t untie this hose that she’s tied up to the diving board. Okay, fine. Fair enough. She dives in, and then the rest of this kind of reminded me a little bit of Insidious, you know? It’s just like, now she’s in this supernatural world of ghosts.

That’s super, super deep, and she’s able to hold her breath for a very long time. She is down there for far too long. Everyone in this movie can hold 

Craig: their breath. And the kid has been down there for like, five minutes. Yeah! Like, come on. But you’re right, she swims down, and eventually the hose tethers. She lets it go.

She reaches the end of it. You know, she takes one last breath out of the hose, which is smart. I wouldn’t have thought of that probably, but she leaves it behind and she goes and she finds her kid. And as she’s trying to pull him back up, like you said, like insidious, like all these other ghosts, presumably the other people who have been killed by this pool are trying to grab her.

But she gets away pretty easily. Like it’s really not that 

Todd: big a deal. Which is always my problem with insidious, by the way, but go on. 

Craig: She can’t find the surface, but then Rebecca finds her. The little ghost girl. I loved this. She opens her hand to reveal that. Smiley face coin, and the coin falls up, which tells the mother that she’s disoriented and that she has been swimming down, and when she looks the other way, and the whole camera does like a 180.

I loved that. 

Todd: I thought that was so cool. It’s really smart. Cause that happens. I mean, anyone who scuba dives knows that you Deep water, right. It’s very easy to get disoriented. You always have to be mindful of where’s up. 

Craig: Uh huh. It was cool with that. I thought that was so cool. And she gets out. And she gets the kid out, and that kid would surely be dead, but he’s not, you know, she revives him, but then the dad is there, and what, is he like, biting them?

Cause the 

Todd: girl goes in to get help, and the ghost water in the kitchen, like, makes the cup full of water vibrate off, which breaks, which then she slips and falls on, this ghost has got incredible foresight, she slips and falls on, cuts her hand on, and then that just sort of stops her from doing anything else.

And then she runs into her dad, and her dad is, again, full on ghost water possessed. And he’s coming after her, and he chases her to the garage, and there’s some sequence in there. Finally, they all get out into the backyard. And Elliot’s choking and there’s something about I felt like it was almost like the distance to the water or 

Craig: something when they first Realized that the pool was haunted they had tried to get away from it I tried to leave but the dad couldn’t like like he started like choking and dying and they had to go back At some point like after that, he was in bed begging his wife like Just let me go back one time, I just need one more time in the pool and it’s, it’s so cool in the pool.

Clip: I’m pretty sure he said that! He 

Todd: did! It was so corny, it was so corny. It’s so 

Craig: cool in the pool. 

Todd: Well, basically what happens is Izzy grabs dad’s own baseball bat and beats the black water out of him. 

Craig: Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s right. But, even though He’s now not possessed, they start trying to leave, and the kid starts, like, choking and dying, and the dad says, I swear to God, I did not see this coming.

Todd: I so saw this coming. 

Craig: The dad says, it requires a sacrifice. Someone has to pay. Someone has to pay, and he jumps into the pool. And the pool takes him and he’s gone. Like I did not see this coming. You know, this kind of movie where you’re focused on a family, a small family, like it feels like poltergeist, you know, you, you think they’ll be okay.

Like they’re going to go through something together, but they’re going to be okay. I guess evil dead rise should have. Taught me a better lesson that that’s certainly not gonna be the case burnt offerings. Yeah. Yeah I thought that these people Were gonna get out of it and I expected it to be like Poltergeist or like oh shit.

Our house was haunted. Thank God. We got away from there intact, but it’s the Like the dad dies and then the lat well or gets the Taken by the pool, whatever. And then the last scene is the other three of them standing by the pool! And the mom’s like, you know, we couldn’t move! And the girl’s like, yeah, but if we did this would just happen to another family, right?

And they’re like, I guess. Dad wouldn’t want that. Dad wouldn’t want that. So they’re just gonna stay there. And you see, you see like a bulldozer or whatever start filling in. The pool full of dirt. Oh man. 

Todd: I don’t know. 

Craig: I mean, I thought it was, I liked 

Todd: it. It was okay. I’ve seen way worse. I it’s not getting a lot of love online.

I can kind of understand why. Like I said, I do think that. The concept kind of falls apart by the end. There’s a lot of weirdness that sort of has to happen, and it’s like stuff we’ve seen before, which is not a knock. I mean, oftentimes we go to these horror movies knowing what we’re gonna see, and we enjoy seeing the tropes come out.

Sure enough, there’s the research. Sure enough, there’s the old lady, you know, who knows everything and can exposition to them. And of course, just like every other poor family who’s gotten some new real estate on their hands, you know, the dad gets possessed and the family’s in trouble. I don’t know, man. I just, ah, it was, it was just kind of mediocre for me.

Did you see, this was actually based, uh, it was directed by Bryce McGuire and it was based off of a short that he did. Did you watch that? No, I didn’t. It’s very simple. It’s It’s just a woman swimming. I mean, you can see it on YouTube, and I’ll put a link on our website to that, but it’s just three minutes long.

And as a short, it works really, really well. You know, just a girl swimming at night, and then she sees kind of a ghost by the side, and then the lights flicker, she pulls under, and the lights come back up, and she’s nowhere to be seen. To take that concept and expand it out as much as they did into a full length movie, you gotta give them some credit for that.

For trying absolutely everything to make that work from Marco Polo to playing chicken to murky water and pools to refill themselves, right? I mean, they did their best that 

Craig: maybe subconsciously. That’s why I was drawn to it because I do. I love the water so much and full confession. I have not been submerged in water since.

The pandemic, I’ve not been in a place where I could be in a pool or in the ocean since before the pandemic. So maybe I was just feeling very nostalgic, but no, I honestly, I really did like it. And I think that it’s not a very good movie, but the actors. And I should probably give credit to the director to save it.

It’s, it’s well made and to say that I care about these characters is probably an exaggeration, but I believed them and they seemed like nice, real people. And. I was rooting for them, all of them, you know, like, the boy is, you know, he has trouble making friends, and the mom is super concerned about making sure that her kids and her family are happy, and the dad is struggling with a debilitating disease, like, I was rooting for these people, so I don’t know.

You could go so far, I think, as to call it kind of like a poltergeist knockoff, but that wouldn’t even really be fair. It’s just a haunted house movie. What’s haunted is the pool, and

Todd: And the water itself, actually. By 

Craig: the end of the movie, I’m like Is the haunted part, like, a deal breaker? 

Todd: I’d really like a pool. I was wondering, now that they’ve appeased the pool, is it okay to swim there again? Do they need to fill it in? That was unclear, 

Craig: because the Asian mother said the water will sleep until somebody else comes.

So it’s almost like maybe the pool just needs some sort of sacrifice every so often. Yeah. Like how long exactly? Maybe till the next pool party, to 

Todd: be honest. 

Craig: What are we talking? What are we talking? Like three years? 

Todd: This was an investment, all right? I expected to get more out of it. Oh boy. Well, you can go to our website and leave us a voice message.

And one of our listeners, Seth, did just that. So let’s have a listen to what Seth had to say to us. 

Seth: Hi Craig and Todd, uh, this is Seth here, and I just wanted to say congratulations on having over, uh, 370 episodes, and I’ve enjoyed every episode I’ve listened to, but if I had to pick a favorite, I’d have to say The Midnight Hour, because that was the first episode I listened to, and I remember being a fan of that movie when I was younger.

Some parts were scary, but, uh, It was probably more just being, or having, a crush on Sandy. When I was in high school is when I really got into horror, I remember watching John Carpenter’s Halloween, and I was just hooked after that. It’s still my favorite franchise, and I’m hoping someday you guys will do Halloween 6.

Just love to hear both of your takes on that one. But thank you again for doing this podcast, for taking time each week to, uh, you know, watch a film, take notes, edit in clips. Get it out there. Um, I really do appreciate it. I also just want to say, you know, thank you guys for being fans. First. Um, I know some movies are better than others, but, you know, unlike some other podcasts, you guys give it a chance.

And if it’s bad, it’s bad, but at least. Then we know which movies, at least for myself, you know, some people rate movies on a scale of one star to four stars. Now I know which movies I can put on in the background if I have friends over and goof on. So, uh, thanks again and, uh, wish you guys nothing but continued success.

Bye. Oh, 

Clip: thank you 

Seth: so much, Seth. 

Craig: That’s really nice. I know. Those, those messages are so humbling. Like, people are so friendly. I appreciate it. 

Todd: Yeah, The Midnight Hour, that was a good time. I remember that being a very, very important movie for me because as, as I told on the episode, that was a movie I didn’t get to watch all the way through when I was a kid and was very upset about it, so, uh.

It’s fun to be able to revisit that as an adult. So it’s kind of fun to see that another person had that childhood memory. I’ve often thought too about doing a rating system. You know, we’ve never have gone that far and I just don’t, I just feel like it’s a little difficult, right? Because there’s so many different reasons or ways you might like a movie that it’s hard to just give an overall.

Star rating something to it. 

Craig: No, I, I agree because movies like this, I, I, I wouldn’t say this is a great movie, but I enjoyed it. So, so what do you do? Like, no, I don’t, I don’t think that’s us. I like that. I like what Seth said that, and he’s right. We are fans first. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: That’s why we do this. That’s why we got started doing this.

Right, he’s absolutely right. I’m willing to give almost anything a chance, and if we end up not liking it, fine. Whatever. I, I still appreciate the genre and the opportunity. And I, I appreciate when filmmakers try something, even if it fails. Good job. Like, yeah, I see what you were trying. Making a movie is hard work.

Yeah, exactly. You did it. Exactly. But right. So many of the bad movies that we’ve watched. Have come from heart the heart, you know, they yeah. Yeah, and so even if it ultimately isn’t a great movie So what who cares you did it you made a movie. Good job. I’ve never made a movie. I know you have 

Todd: Well, I think proof positive that you are willing to give pretty much any movie a chance to just look at our back catalog It’s some of the stuff I foisted on Craig Yeah against his will and some of those you’ve turned out to really enjoy I was 

Craig: gonna say some of them.

I hated You Vampiros lesbos and some of them I thought were amazing and that I would never see before how sue oh yeah and many others. So yeah it’s it’s not a surprise like oh listeners guess what I like horror movies 

Todd: well what we appreciate even more is you guys reaching out to us and thank you so much seth for taking the time to do that.

And any of you can do that as well. All you have to do is go to our website. There’s a link there. It’s up in the menu right now, but it should be a little more prominent on the page later. And just click the talk to us. And, uh, you don’t even need any special software. You don’t have to register, install anything.

You just simply go to a webpage. And as long as you got a mic on your phone or your laptop, and who doesn’t, you can just record a quick little 90 second message, and when you click that button, it’ll go right to us. Please find our website there. It’s ChainsawHorror. com. You can also find us just by searching Two Guys in a Chainsaw podcast.

We’re on Facebook, we’re on Twitter, we’re on Instagram. If you, uh, follow us in all those places, you can leave comments on everything that we post out there, or send us private messages. We love to hear from you. So until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.