Old Review

It is well known by this point that M. Night Shyamalan is a frustrating filmmaker. His films are either mind-bending and brilliant (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Split), or shockingly awful with no redeeming qualities (The Last Airbender, The Happening, After Earth). Any movie of his from the last 20 years automatically comes with the question “Will this be genius or garbage?” 

Sitting firmly in the middle of that spectrum is his latest film Old, which has the ability to turn on a dime from being truly thought-provoking to laughably silly. It’s as if the “mind-bending and brilliant” Shyamalan is fighting for custody of the film with the “no redeeming qualities” Shyamalan. As with most custody battles, by the end, it feels like they both lost.

The film mainly focuses on the Cappas, who are struggling to stay together for one last family vacation. The parents, Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps), arrive at the film’s tropical setting on the verge of divorce, constantly fighting with each other as their young son and daughter anxiously eavesdrop. 

Things take a turn, however, after a gratuitous M. Night Shyamalan cameo invites them and a few other guests to enjoy an exclusive visit to the resort’s secret secluded beach, an offer only made to a select few. Once there, they all discover the beach’s true time-paradox nature, and find their bodies and minds aging rapidly. They proceed to pick each other off, one by one, Agatha Christie style, while time marches forward at an ungodly pace.

There are some genuinely inventive and unsettling aspects to Old. At its best, the film feels like a lost Twilight Zone episode or a shelved Gene Roddenberry concept. Its basic premise of time accelerating beyond our control is a solid foundation for some heady horror, and the family dynamics at play have a lot of potential weight to them as well. The main problem comes from the screenplay. 

As mentioned above, M. Night Shyamalan is a divisive storyteller, and no aspect of his work is more polarizing than his dialogue. Even in his best movies, he struggles to make his characters sound like real people, which is a problem that’s only heightened by Old’s isolative storyline. By trapping a small group of characters all in one location, all they can do is talk to each other, and it never sounds quite right. For example, one character’s defining quirk is that he likes to ask people personal details about their character’s backstories, occupations, and skills that might come in handy later in the story. It’s all very expository and clunky. A gun show hosted by Chekhov.

Actors, however, can excel with even the weakest material, and that happens frequently here. The aged-up versions of the children played in their late teens by Alex Wolff (Hereditary) and Thomasin McKenzie (JoJo Rabbit) are particular standouts. Rising stars of offbeat movies, the two effectively play a pair of small children trapped in the body of young adults for all the horror that concept is worth. Granted, the plot immediately thrusts both characters into some bizarre situations which, while shocking, don’t really elicit either scares or laughs. The actors nevertheless give their all, and wind up elevating the movie as a whole. I’m excited to see what comes next from them both.

Old is a beautiful looking movie. Shot on location on a Dominican beach (the director’s first film not to shoot in his hometown of Philadelphia), the cinematography of the ocean and the sand is truly gorgeous to watch. That being said, it wasn’t quite enough for me to justify its mid-pandemic theatrical release. Many studios have been digitally releasing their films to help reach an audience in these difficult times, and Universal has a streaming service, so I really don’t understand the rush to put this out in theaters. It’s a fine movie, with some incredible visuals and impressive performances, but there’s nothing about it that would make it stand out to a pandemic-wary audience. Pre-COVID, a halfway decent release like this would have been able to play all summer and let its audience find it. Now, however, it’s just not worth the effort to go seek this one out.