Film

old

M. Night Shyamalan introduces his latest film, Old, before it hits the screen. But this is a director who truly needs no introduction, and I won’t spend long on the ups and many downs of his career. The man has done his Hollywood penance, and proven his box office worth, filling a distinct niche. You just can’t lick him. And with Old, more so than any other of his recent films, he’s back in his aughts-era groove. So as much as viewers continue to come into his films hoping to relive the good old days of his masterful “twist” filmmaking, at this point it’s been 20 years since The Sixth Sense blew our minds. And as much as we keep wishing for that same old feeling we once got watching his movies, at this point, I have made my peace. I am no longer bringing those early expectations into the film. Rather, I’m just grateful to be seeing a well-crafted, absorbing, and original (not based on any existing IP or franchises) thriller on the big screen. Old plays out a lot like an episode of The Twilight Zone. It takes old clichés like “they grow up fast” or “seems like yesterday they were children” and makes them literal, as a group of vacationers age rapidly over the course of a day on a beautiful, secluded beach.

It’s an intriguing, strange, and spooky premise but also a lumbering, awkward, and goofy one. Yet in the theater, if you take things at face value, you’ll be hooked. It’s the kind of stripped-to-basics setup that’s simple enough to be compelling despite the campy and obvious turns.

The film focuses on a family having one final vacation before parents Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps, Phantom Thread) announce their separation to their children, 11-year-old Maddox and six–yearold Trent. Further complicating matters is a tumor diagnosis for Prisca that might or might not be benign. The family arrives at the Anamika Resort, greeted by craft cocktails and an exceptionally helpful staff. It’s almost too wonderful, the hospitality unsettling, with the manager singling out the family for a secret beach excursion he only makes available for select guests. So they head to this remote and truly dreamy beach. Also along for the ride are a surgeon, his young trophy wife, his elderly mother, and young daughter. They have blankets, umbrellas, and coolers full of provisions. The children play, the adults relax. Maddox spots a famous rapper, Mid-Sized Sedan (which got the biggest laugh of anything on screen), also enjoying the environs. But then a dead body turns up, a dog dies, and the kids start to complain that their swimsuits are too tight. See, they’re all aging at a rapid pace, which is more evident in the children than in the adults. As they try to make sense of what exactly is going on, fear overtakes the group and accusations fly. Old leaves a lot of obvious crumbs as to what’s going on. In the exposition, Maddox is singing in the car and her mom remarks, “I can’t wait to hear your voice when you’re older” — a totally normal and not at all foreshadowing thing to say. This also epitomizes the major problem with the film: the hokey dialogue, which just doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, along with the general ridiculousness of the rapid aging. Yet, in the moment, I bought into it, in all its manic, preposterous glory. Old might be unhinged, but it’s in a classy, earnest way. What the film does have going for it is craftsmanship. The shots are well thought out and composed, the film impeccably paced. Shyamalan knows what to withhold to build suspense. And while some of the spooks are cheaper than others, Shyamalan appreciates that body horror doesn’t always need to be grotesque; the true horror is the fate that will ultimately befall us all. Crow’s feet can be as scary to us as mortals as an open wound. But it also disturbs with a true chiller of a sequence that serves up some gross-out Death Becomes Her realness. For a film that wants to make an emotional point about appreciating the time that remains with those we care about, we don’t end up caring much about any of the characters on screen. They lack dimension and are not particularly likeable, yet you’ll still be drawn into their plight. Cause it’s fun to see people age before your eyes, to problem solve, to watch as the dynamics shift as they try to escape and try to figure out what exactly is going on and what they can do. In the end, there is not so much a twist as a reveal. The ending is definitely not a groaner — it sort of makes sense — but it doesn’t fully satisfy. It both explains too much and not enough. The actual most confounding part is that Shyamalan, who is not a strong (or really even passable) actor, continues to cast himself in his films, this time in a particularly meta role. Thankfully, he has an excellent ensemble cast (Ken Leung, Rufus Sewell, Abbey Lee, etc.) to pick up the slack, elevating the clunky dialogue. The teen actors in particular — Eliza Scanlen (Little Women), Alex Wolff (Hereditary), and Thomasin Mackenzie (Jojo Rabbit) — bring remarkable nuance, each having the difficult task of simultaneously playing a child and an adult. By the film’s measure, I would’ve aged about four years watching this. And yeah, if you put it that way, it’s not worth it. But if I took anything away from this, it’s that life is too short to continue to hate on M. Night Shyamalan. Dude is out there successfully making unique, ORIGINAL movies that are playing IN THEATERS, are still oddly compelling, and are always something to talk to about. So keep doing your thing, M. Night, and I will keep watching. Meg Weichman is a film archivist, film programmer, and serious film person. Find her on Letterboxd (@ckdexterhaven3) rewatching Armageddon and trying to convince people that Temple of Doom is the best Indiana Jones movie.

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