You may not know this about me, but I have a great admiration for M. Night Shyamalan as a filmmaker. As a kid, Signs scared the hell out of me, and has always been a movie I look back fondly on. Though he almost single-handedly ruined my childhood with The Last Airbender, I’ve still considered myself a moderate fan of M. Night’s movies, if for no other reason than the fact I know I’m going to get something unique every single time. When the first trailer dropped for his newest movie, Old, I knew I had to see it.
There’s something wrong with this beach!
In short, Old focuses on a group of individuals that find themselves stuck on a beach. The catch is, the humans age at an accelerated rate on this beach, condensing their entire lifespan into roughly a day. The characters must quickly find a way off of this beach, and get to the bottom of what’s going on.
Let me just say that I enjoyed watching Old. I do not think it’s a great movie, but I did enjoy my experience watching it. The premise is interesting enough that I was hooked early on, and Shyamalan does a good job of keeping you engaged for practically the whole way through. However, the thriller of it all was the only thing keeping me interested throughout the film.
This movie has “George Lucas Star Wars Prequels” levels of dialogue. The opening 15 minutes is a nonstop barrage of blatant foreshadowing, with characters talking about getting old, or not valuing the time they have. It’s incredibly frustrating when a filmmaker holds the audience’s hand and treats them like simple-minded children, and that’s exactly what Shyamalan does with Old. He presents ideas and concepts in a way that screams “I’m so clever and forward thinking,” but it’s the exact opposite in reality.
The performances in Old are a mixed bag. Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie both turn in some really decent performances, playing children in the body of teenagers/young adults. However, I found Vicky Krieps to be really flat in the movie. To be fair, however, there are very few people on Earth that could give an impressive delivery of some of the stuff M. Night put down in that script.
Okay, I can’t talk about this movie anymore without getting into SPOILERS, so let’s do that.
**SPOILER WARNING FOR OLD**
Okay. If you know M. Night Shyamalan, you know he loves his mystery boxes. It wouldn’t be a movie of his if there wasn’t some world-shattering plot twist in the third act. Old is no different. At the end of the film, it’s revealed that all of the people on the beach were strategically lured there by the company running the resort they were staying at. As viewers will notice, each of them suffers from a different type of medical condition, either physical or mental. A medical company is using the rapid-aging effects of this beach in order to test the long term effects of medicine, trimming down the time to discover cures by decades.
On the surface, this plot twist introduces some really interesting ideas and concepts. The ethics of using humans as guinea pigs to test new medicines. Sacrificing the few to save the many. However, the movie doesn’t go any further than that. It pretty much goes, “have you ever thought about this?” and then stops the conversation right there. It’s because of this that the movie feels incredibly shallow in its messaging.
There’s also something to be said about the way Old handles the conditions plaguing its characters. Everybody’s condition feels like a character-defining plot tool, rather than an actual illness. This is most evident with the doctor, who suffers from Schizophrenia. His illness pretty much turns him into a psycho murderer. There’s no depth, no nuance. He goes crazy and tries to kill people. It feels like an incredibly insensitive and outdated way to depict a person with mental illness, especially for such an experienced filmmaker.
The best movie plot twists are ones that completely transform how you view a film on repeat viewings. Old doesn’t do that. Instead, I’ll constantly be thinking about how certain concepts were fumbled, and how ideas felt shoehorned into the story. That said, if you’re familiar with M. Night Shyamalan’s shtick, and even like a few of his movies, Old is still worth a watch. The thriller and mystery box of it all is enough to stay engaged the whole way through, though I guess if you’ve already read this far into my review, the secret is blown.
