“Old” (2021)
The 14th offering from M Night Shyamalan is a disturbing one and a portent at a future no-one wishes to admit.
The 14th offering from M Night Shyamalan is a disturbing one and a portent at a future no-one wishes to admit.
I fell in love with M Night Shyamalan’s third cinematic offering when in 1999 Haley Joel Osment saw dead people, “they’re everywhere”, and whilst we as the audience were distracted with the constant drip, drip clues of the red colour scheme, we hadn’t realised that the calming, welcoming and smiling character inhabited by Bruce Willis was in fact dead all along. The Sixth Sense was a Zeitgeist film in every sense and especially so for this now 50 year old who looks back on the Prince inspired party year of 1999 with more than a little fondness. I had to travel out of my county/state a year later to see the fantastic follow up Unbreakable, a rarity here in the UK but my town/county wasn’t showing his Bruce Willis inspired tale of shattering comic book myths as well as fragile glass, and I love Signs far more than sniffy film critics ever will. Two years later the director created a real favourite of mine with The Village before we fell out for a few years as I largely ignored Lady in the Water in 2006 through three films later, After Earth in 2013. Then James McAvoy disturbed me greatly with his twisted and schizophrenic portrayal in Split and 2019’s Glass, M Night Shyamalan’s follow up to Unbreakable nearly 20 years earlier astounded and pleased me greatly. I cringed when I heard tales of a follow up/sequel/prequel to Unbreakable, but boy did he pull it off.
As he does here with Old. The beauty of a M Night Shyamalan film is that the clues are laid before us right from the off but we’re too busily distracted with the tale, and the characters and the story slowly unfolding, and all of which are to the director’s cinematic credit. His greatest show and tell later films (The Sixth Sense/The Village) all have Signs (see what I did there?) and the story telling stepping stones readily on view. It’s just that we’re not paying attention in the right directions, and mesmerised by the directing of a fantastic story teller. Here the hints and clues are immediately apparent and well before the complete breakdown and thorough reveal at the denouement of this 108 minute film. The director himself hints at the reveal early on and within his capacity as an actor in his own films, a duty he often fulfils, his periphery character soon becomes somewhat central to the entire film.
Old is easily prefaced and summarised spoiler free: A disparate and entirely separate collection of a dozen or so people (married couples, brothers, sisters, children) are given the opportunity of experiencing an entirely separate and exclusive beach on an already opulent and extravagant tropical resort getaway. Once there, each character experiences the very worst of any ailment or condition they already had before this luxurious holiday, and rather than rest and relaxation in paradise, their collective time races at an exponent rate compared to daily experience and one by one they attempt to fight off the almost instant ravages of time as well as the deterioration of their individual minds.
An all star ensemble cast brilliantly realise M Night Shyamalan’s vision as well as the book Sandcastle, upon which the film is based. Personal favourite actor Gael Garcia Bernal crumbles before your eyes as finance accountant “Guy” and Vicky Krieps excels as Guy’s wife “Prisca” and mother to their young children “Trent” and “Maddox”. Rufus Sewell is a surgeon named “Charles” and his descent into madness is the film’s starkest representation of the horrific effects of the beach and the surrounds they are all physically unable to leave. Ken Leung attempts to rationalise the situation as level headed nurse “Jarin” and keeping further spoilers to a minimum, Abbey Lee stars as “Chrystal”, Nikki-Amuka-Bird as “Patricia” and Eliza Scanlan as “Kara”.
I found Old deeply disturbing. The graphic horror, when it arrives, is not via jump scare but by that wonderful sense of the building dread and concern for these characters who are quickly and surely ageing and decaying before our eyes. They each seemingly have a day left to live and a day that will span many years and their eventual death through old age. However, with this comes the decaying of the mind, the onset of psychosis and graphic outbursts of violence. The theme of time is an obvious one, yet a pleasingly different take on this subject from the cinematic master of the concept of time, Christopher Nolan. It shines a light on the ailments (personal and physical) we all refuse to acknowledge, as well as our collective human foibles and frailties. There’s an air of time stopping still yet the world still turning. And there’s more than a conspiratorial and prescient air that no-one wishes to acknowledge come the film’s final obvious reveal.
Old is a difficult watch at times and the book upon which it’s based is on my reading list. If you’re a fan of the director you’ll kind of know what to expect but it may still shock you.
Highly recommended.
Thanks for reading. There are numerous film reviews within my archives, lengthy tomes on the careers of Quentin Tarantino, the aforementioned Christopher Nolan, or the more recent individual reviews linked below:
“Uncharted” (2022)
The PlayStation crossover that’s as faintly ridiculous as the fun filled console game that spawned it.medium.com
“The Batman” (2022)
A gothic, dirty, fetishised and stylised “sins of the father” tale that was almost very good indeed.medium.com
“C’mon C’mon” (2021)
And the existential tale that hit far too close to home, and at exactly the wrong time.medium.com