A 2024 supernatural stinker joins ‘Tarot’ and ‘Ghostbusters’ as Max’s latest streaming villain

Netflix may be the go-to streamer for all the shoddy action thrillers and tasteless rom-coms that somehow make their way onto the viewership charts, but if you’re looking for a streaming battleground that you can count on to fascinate, there’s no finer theater than Max.

Blockbuster champions such as Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga could be bossing the badlands one day, only for creatively decrepit agents like Tarot to unleash their mirthlessness the next. Recently, Furiosa succeeded in battling off the last wave of invaders, but now a brand new threat has emerged to join Madame Web, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and Tarot in their bid to lay waste to the Max viewership charts.

Night Swim, the Jason Blum-enabled xerox of a xerox of a horror movie, has entered the fray, and it’s hoping to drown all who stand in its way.

Per FlixPatrol, Night Swim has quite firmly nestled itself into second place on the worldwide Max film charts on this day of Aug. 28. It has a long way to go before it can think about extinguishing Furiosa‘s shining light at the summit, but a challenger is a challenger is a challenger.

Written and directed by Bryce McGuire — the brain trust behind the 2014 short film of the same name that the feature is based on — Night Swim stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Thunderbolts*) and Academy Award nominee Kerry Condon as Ray and Eve, a husband and wife who recently purchased a new home with an in-ground swimming pool; a great find for a family of four. The only problem? The swimming pool is evil.

A $54.7 million box office haul against a $15 million budget may have worked out well for Night Swim, but a 20% critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes spells a very different, much more accurate story.

And now, Night Swim, armed with its asinine plotting, has quickly established itself a key member of the forces of darkness over at Max; a sect that has largely been populated by Sony up until this point, and whose mainstays Frozen Empire and Tarot continue to bulldoze the Top 10 with their cinematic incompetence.

As for who Max can count on as its makeshift Avengers, we already mentioned Furiosa, and its older sibling Mad Max: Fury Road continues to hold the line at number 10. Rock-solid thrillers Out of Darkness and Greenland continue to support Fury Road from the seventh and eighth spots, respectively, while Illumination’s Migration haplessly tries to fend off the Sinister Sonys at number four. And the battle rages on…