Mark Reviews Movies: OLD

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 22, 2021

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan isn't playing a game with Old. There's something of a twist to this story, to be sure, although it's more of an explanation. Even then, the final reveal only explains enough for the premise to make some kind of logical sense. That's kind of the wrong move, ultimately, but by the time the long-winded and overly explanatory denouement arrives, it doesn't matter. The film mostly exists and mostly works—often with genuine terror and sometimes with real pathos—as a blatantly straightforward allegory.

The subject, as one should be able to tell from the title, is aging. The premise is, like the best (and, of course, the worst) of Shyamalan's plots, a clever gimmick, based either in science-fiction or fantasy, although it really doesn't matter which one it is.

A mystery evolves. The rules are established. The characters have to face the consequences, and once the story finds its foundation and rhythm, there's an eerie, melancholy air that hangs heavily over everything and everyone in this tale.

Things seem quite happy at the start. A family of four is on vacation at an exclusive resort, located on a remote island somewhere in some sea. In retrospect, the characters probably should have done a minimal amount of research into this place, especially since we discover they won the trip in some kind of online sweepstakes.

Forget those nitpicky details, though (If one is going to find a reason to pick apart the exposition, it's in Shyamalan's clunky dialogue, which he seems to parody with a precocious kid, before indulging a bit too much in it with every other character). Here, Guy (Gael García Bernal) and his wife Prisca (Vicky Krieps) have traveled to the resort with their two children, aged 6 and 11. The group is met by the impeccably accommodating manager (played by Gustaf Hammarsten), who offers the adults signature cocktails and the kids a smorgasbord of sweets.

All seems well with the place and the family, but if the reality of the marriage is any sign, the resort might have a few problems, too. This vacation is to be their last as a whole, united family. Guy has been holding out hope that Prisca might have changed her mind about separating, since she was recently diagnosed with a soon-enough-to-be-specified disease. Her illness is "irrelevant," she says, so the vacation continues with a cloud of doom that eventually grows.

The real start of the premise arrives when the manager offers the family a trip to an exclusive beach, hidden away behind massive and jagged rock formations on a restricted part of the island (An amusing in-joke of sorts has Shyamalan casting himself as the driver who chauffeurs the main characters to the beach, leaving them to the gimmick and the drama). Again, this isn't the smartest of moves under the circumstances, but Guy, Prisca, their younger son Trent (Nolan River), and elder daughter Maddox (Alexa Swinton) are ready to relax on this little piece of paradise.

Anyway, the family members start to feel a bit odd. So, too, do other characters on the beach, such as doctor Charles (Rufus Sewell) and his looks-obsessed wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee), and when Jarin (Ken Leung) and his wife Patricia (Nikkia Amuka-Bird) arrive, they also start to feel a bit strange.

Worse, Trent finds the dead body of a woman. Even worse, Charles is convinced that a famous rapper (played by Aaron Pierre) on the beach must have killed her. Worst of all, the kids—Trent (now played by Alex Wolff), Maddox (now played by Thomasin McKenzie), and the doctor's daughter Kara (Eliza Scanlen)—have aged into teenagers in a matter of hours.

Shyamalan, adapting the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters, is smart enough to know that we'll be looking for clues scattered throughout this story, and he's smarter to know to avoid playing such a game in this case. The idea here is too solid, too existentially terrifying, and too filled with universal weight to waste it on a hunt for little hints about what's really happening here.

Instead, the story simply unfolds, as everyone on the beach ages rapidly (about a year every 30 minutes, by someone's calculation) and some experience sudden bouts of dormant or recently diagnosed diseases. The tumor Prisca has been keeping secret exponentially grows, resulting a scene of surgery (Shyamalan makes it particularly discomforting by keeping the camera on the observers' faces), and the doctor has a hidden mental health issue. None of them can do anything as their physical and mental faculties start to wither (The transitioning make-up effects, as well as the physical shifts in performances, are subtle enough—a few wrinkles and receding hairlines—that the illusion is effective).

The younger kids suddenly have to deal with puberty (Shyamalan and cinematographer Mike Gioulakis stage a few smooth-moved one-takes in order to give us a sense of how fast some of these things are happening, and one, after Trent and Kara "play," especially stands out). They also realize all of the important milestones of their lives have disappeared. The adults keep looking for a way to escape their fate, as well as try to deal with the unstable man who's paranoid about people looking at his wife or coming for him. After several hours on the beach, all of those problems—both big and small—seem to mean not much of anything, really.

The gimmick of a story isn't really a metaphor when it's this transparently about the actual thing it's about. That's the strength of Old, which doesn't fool around with the fear, anxiety and terror of aging and all that can—and does—come with it.

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