Merrill at the 2nd house, talks to the people with the new mower and pool, then dives in their pool, but emerges out of a completely different pool with an old lady telling him never to come in her yard again and mad that he never visited her son in the hospital. Maybe I missed something or it's a heck of an editorial gaff.
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That cut was done most intentionally as a transitional storytelling device to smoothly take us from the second pool to the third without the unnecessary narrative filler which came off brilliantly. Cuts like that one subconsciously bind us to the protagonist's quest, making it more important to see him fulfill
it (swimming all of the pools) no matter how adversarial his encounters may be.
My impression was that the older lady lived at the same home. Perhaps a parent or in-law the residents had taken in. The previous characters are at the other end of the pool, and no longer in site of the viewing audience. With the exception of the drained pool with the little boy, and the public pool, I don't know how one could differentiate between the rest of the pools. They all look pretty much alike. It is correct to say it's a "storytelling device", but it's not a different pool in my opinion.
shareThis is an intentional transition device. I believe the film is some kind of dream Ned is having, so having him swim seamlessly from one pool to another fits in with that interpretation.
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It's a cut. Nothing of importance happened in between him swimming in one pool and the next that was worth portraying. It's a smooth transitional device often used in movie making.
It keeps the story moving. It's not the same pool.