Watching "The Pool", you may get a strange feeling of deja vu, and no wonder: though the production year of this slasher film is 2001, it might as well have been 1981. The image is glossier, of course, and the setting is a pool in Prague instead of, say, the deep American woods, but everything else is the same: the terrible dialogue ("John? John? John? Cut the crap. Stop fooling around. This isn't funny anymore"); the undeveloped characters; the 27-year-old-looking "high school graduates"; the killer that almost magically seems to be everywhere (how long can he hold his breath, anyway?) and has to be killed about five separate times; the lame motivation behind the whole massacre. Speaking in the film's favor, the direction here is right-on-the-money, and shines especially in the stalk-and-slash sequences, which are fast, brutal and unrelenting (this killer means business). But when the material is so awful, the rating cannot be higher than....*1/2 out of 4.
