It’s the first week of 2024, and after the underwhelming performances of big-budget films in 2023, it will be interesting to see how movies are received this year. It doesn’t help that movies have been delayed after months of inactivity from the strikes with the writers’ and actors’ guilds. Additionally, January is generally known as the month where the movies that the studios have little faith in are dumped. In the holiday season this past month, Wonka came out to be the victor of all the releases in December.
The first big January release is the horror film Night Swim, which stars Monarch‘s Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon after her acclaimed performance in The Banshees of Inisherin got her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Deadline has reported that the early box office for Night Swim is currently dog-paddling to $1.45 million in previews at 2,750 theaters from showtimes that began at 5 PM. The film is a smaller budgeted movie at $15 million. It follows in the trend of PG-13 horror films that appeal to the 17 to 34-year-old demographic, although it is not expected to compare to something like last year’s M3GAN, which closed out with over $95 million at the box office. Night Swim is expected to make anywhere from $8 million to $12 million in the next three days.
Our own Tyler Nichols would give Night Swim a ho-hum reaction as he says in his review, “From an underdeveloped Amityville Horror-style turn to some more awful CGI, it’s terrible on top of more bad. At a certain point, the screenwriters are simply trying to check off horror tropes. There are so many ideas here, and none are focused on any satisfying conclusion. The water is the monster, no it’s ghosts, no it’s the dad–make up your mind! It’s all so convoluted. By the time the ending happens, I was rooting for the characters to continue their awful decision-making and end this already.”