THE POOL (2018 - Thai)

Studio:      Shudder
Director:    Ping Lumpraploeng
Writer:      Ping Lumpraploeng
Producer:  Amornthep Sukmanont, Charoen Kaithitisuwan, Nitcha-orn Palakon
Stars:     Theeradej Wongpuapan, Ratnamon Ratchiratham

Review Score:

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Summary:

A desperate man and his injured fiancée become hopelessly trapped in a drained swimming pool with a deadly crocodile.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Day One – After his film crew wraps their shoot, set decorator Day stays behind to relax on a floating mattress in a six meter-deep pool. Before leaving Day alone, Day’s friend Mayom ties up Day’s dog Lucky, moves Day’s personal belongings, places an insulin shot on a nearby tray table, tosses a roll of duct tape at Day, and warns that he began draining the water.

Day falls asleep. When he wakes, Day finds that enough water drained that he can no longer leave the pool. Day tears a fingernail by futilely trying to climb out.

Day’s pregnant fiancée Koy calls Day’s cellphone. The vibration causes the phone to inch toward the pool’s edge. Day prepares to catch the phone, but instead chooses to help Lucky climb out at the other side after the leashed dog falls into the pool. The phone falls in the water.

A pizza deliveryman shows up while Day swims underwater to block the drain. The deliveryman leaves the pizza on a diving board. Because of a belt chain stuck on the drain’s grate, Day is unable to resurface in time to get the deliveryman’s attention.

Day takes another nap on the floating mattress. Koy arrives and, unaware of the situation, prepares to dive into the pool. Day wakes in time to shout a warning, causing Koy to slip and knock herself unconscious on the platform. A crocodile that recently escaped captivity during a flood also enters the pool.

Day Two – Day snatches the duct tape from the crocodile’s mouth and uses it to bandage Koy’s bleeding head wound. Using Koy’s razorblade necklace, Day unscrews the grate leading to a drainage tunnel. However, the crocodile crawls into the tunnel first. Day enters the tunnel anyway, but finds it ends at a ladder leading to a padlocked grate on the surface.

The crocodile reenters the drained pool. Day returns in time to pull the animal away from Koy. Day explains the situation when Koy regains consciousness. Lucky drops the pizza box into the pool, allowing Day and Koy to eat.

Day Three – Day passes out during the day from lack of insulin. The crocodile lays eggs. Rain starts during the night.

Day Four – Day and Koy seal the grate after the crocodile falls in the tunnel. The couple starts a fire to boil and eat the crocodile eggs. Day tries unsuccessfully to hoist Koy out of the pool. During an emotional conversation, Day admits he wanted Koy to have an abortion.

Day Five – Day and Koy let the crocodile back into the pool so they can get into the drainage tunnel. At the padlocked grate, Day uses a wire to reach his insulin shot, but it falls from the tray table and smashes on the ground.

Day Six – Day finds another insulin supply that Mayom unknowingly knocked into the grate when he moved Day’s belongings. Day returns to the pool when he sees what looks like a paraglider overhead, but it turns out to be a drone.

Wind knocks down a barbed wire. Day uses the wire to try climbing out of the pool, but falls and breaks his leg. Day fends off another crocodile attack.

Day returns to the tunnel to follow it to the other end, but finds it only leads to another empty pool. Distraught, Day passes out in the tunnel as another rainstorm begins.

Day Seven – The drone crashes in the pool. Two men tie a ladder to a stack of large pipes to climb down and retrieve it. Day is unable to flag down the men before they leave.

With his knuckles wrapped in barbed wire, Day battles the crocodile while Koy remains in the tunnel with rising water. The ladder gets pulled out of the pool when the cylinders it was hitched to roll away in the storm. The crocodile mauls Day as he begins passing out. Koy manages to blow a dog-training whistle to rouse Day. However, Lucky responds to the whistle by jumping like he was taught. The leash breaks Lucky’s neck as he falls dead against a pool wall. Day kills the crocodile.

Day tearfully uses his dog’s hanging body to climb out of the pool. Day then uses a long pipe to pry open the padlocked grate trapping Koy. The force of his pull causes the pipe to swing Day back over the pool. Day decides to sacrifice himself by falling in order to fully force the grate open. However, Day manages to grab the pool’s edge and climb out again. Day pulls Koy out of the flooded tunnel and revives her.

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Review:

How can I be hot for a smaller indie such as “The Pool” but only lukewarm on a popular theatrical thriller like “Crawl” (review here) when both films essentially adhere to the same single sentence logline? Both movies demand suspending heaps of disbelief as Murphy’s Law continually, sometimes almost comically, compounds the protagonists’ increasingly punishing predicament. Both movies also include so many absurdly improbable developments, viewers run the risk of choking on popcorn every time they involuntarily open incredulous mouths to exclaim, “Oh, c’mon!”

Any ludicrousness in “The Pool’s” ever-escalating setup remains easier to stomach due to its scaled-back simplicity. The killer crocodile threatening our heroes is an average animal, not some massively mutated monstrosity. The surrounding setting is an ordinary Olympic-size swimming pool, not an intricate underwater network of sunken Aztec ruins. The relative reality of “The Pool” asks less of its audience than any mainstream “human versus chaotic nature” movie based around epic action does. If you’d give a pass to a “Deep Blue Sea” sequel, or accept SyFy’s latest “Mega-Something vs. Dino-Whatever” with good humor, you’ll assuredly find exponentially more frightening fun in “The Pool’s” supercharged suspense.

After a film crew wrapped their shoot, set decorator Day stayed behind to relax in the location’s large pool. Day’s buddy warned that he started draining the water before leaving Day alone. But Day fell asleep on a floatie and now finds himself helpless at the bottom of what’s basically an underground cube.

One man. One big box. Premises rarely come more straightforward than this, yet writer/director Ping Lumpraploeng taps into a seemingly bottomless fountain of creative ideas to pile on more tension and trauma than any ordinary imagination could concoct for such a Spartan situation.

Day might be able to catch a cellphone vibrating closer and closer to the pool’s edge, but he simultaneously has a second dilemma of rescuing his dog precariously dangling from a tied leash. Unlucky timing continues when a pizza deliveryman arrives while Day stays submerged in remaining water to deal with the drain. Whatever can go wrong will, and absolutely does, from catching a belt chain on the drainage grate to losing a life-saving insulin shot. All of this occurs in just the first 20 minutes, before Day’s pregnant fiancée and an escaped crocodile end up trapped in the enclosure with him.

The number of near misses, catastrophic coincidences, and panic-inducing plot turns reaches Mount Everest heights well before the last act even begins. But “The Pool’s” metric ton of nail-biting entertainment is specifically built to be an escapist experience best enjoyed while shouting at the screen and persistently peeking through fingers covering eyes. Racing brains regularly wonder what could possibly complicate matters next, and are satisfying shocked when “The Pool” invents another wild way to raise the stakes yet again.

Several sequences are conceived to be particularly excruciating with the ordeals they present. Whether it’s fingernail tearing, palm flesh shredding on barbed wire, or body parts smacking on solid surfaces, gruesome sights and sickly sounds ensure every pop, rip, and crunch can be phantomly felt as they prompt sympathetic winces, hisses, and muscle-clenching recoils. Even as a film one can watch from the comfort of a couch, “The Pool” turns viewers into vicarious participants in the pain instead of passively disconnected voyeurs.

Matching the relentless aggression with which it puts Day through the wringer, “The Pool” regularly impresses with unfailing MacGyver-like ingenuity. I’m not sure if the crocodile is all CGI, an actual animal, or probably some mixture of both, but it looks terrific. “The Pool” also makes an honest-to-goodness character out of Day’s dog Lucky, leading to a heart-wrenching finale with an unexpectedly emotional wallop.

The only reason you’re hearing about “The Pool” now instead of when it released overseas in 2018 is because it’s a foreign film. If it were a big studio production starring Chris Hemsworth, Pine, or Evans, “The Pool” would have been a ballyhooed box office smash. Don’t let the subtitled Thai language turn your head in the wrong direction. “The Pool” is stylized with the same slickness as a Hollywood blockbuster, just without all the puffed up flash, pomp, and circumstance.

Review Score: 85

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