The Girl in the Pool Digital Review

3 star mildly ridiculous but fun thriller.

The Girl in the Pool is a 2024 American drama mystery thriller film, written by Jackson Reid Williams and directed by Dakota Gorman (Natural Disasters, Get Big).

It available to stream on UK Digital Platforms from 20th January 2025, courtesy of Signature Entertainment.

“OK, all you gotta do is make it through dinner, alright? That’s all you gotta do, you just have to make it through this dinner”

Thomas (Freddie Prinze Jr. – She’s All That, I Know What You Did Last Summer) is a middle aged business man having something of a mid life crisis. It’s his birthday and he gets a surprise visit from his mistress Hannah (Gabrielle Haugh – Runt, Boneyard). Very nice, but he is going out for a celebratory meal with his wife Kristen (Monica Potter – The Last House on the Left, Saw) and doesn’t have a lot of time.

They head outside to the pool and he walks away for a moment to confront the next door neighbours kid Aiden (Micah Giovanni – Paradise City) who has been flying his drone over the garden. Not ideal when you are up to no good. When he returns to Hannah, she is floating face down in the pool, blood everywhere. No time to think, he shoves her into a towel bin and heads off to get ready to go out.

Imagine his excitement when he finds out that Kristen has in fact planned a surprise birthday party for him, at the house where the body is hidden. He now has all of his family and friends there, including his vocally disapproving father-in-law William (Kevin Pollak – The Usual Suspects, End of Days), his two kids Rose (Brielle Barbusca – Big Time Adolescence) and Alex (Tyler Lawrence Gray – Feeling Randy) and his workmates who are hellbent on getting wasted. Can he work out who got there early and killed Hannah before somebody stumbles across the body?

“OK, truthfully, I found mould. Yeah ew, it’s disgusting, I know and I’m going to deal with it later, but just please don’t tell your Mom right now.”

The Girl in the Pool is an entertaining film. The script leaves a little to be desired, but there are some genuinely good actors here who make the most of what they have to work with. It’s a good thriller and a good idea for a story and watching Thomas run around trying to keep everyone away from the evidence is very amusing.

There is a strong underlying current of comedy here, which helps out no end but it takes itself a little too seriously in places and may have played out better as an actual comedy rather than a thriller. The ending was also a bit sudden and quite moralistic. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you don’t pitch your expectations too high then this one is well worth a stream.

“Nice try, but I already know everything and I’m not letting you get away with it.”