Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Writer: M. Night Shyamalan
Producer: M. Night Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock, Ashwin Rajan
Stars: Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, Aaron Pierre, Embeth Davidtz
Review Score:
Summary:
Vacationers at an island resort end up stranded on a secluded beach that has the mysterious power to rapidly age everyone.
Review:
Speaking strictly about unique technicians in popular cinema, M. Night Shyamalan can be discussed in the same sentence with any number of notable filmmakers including, but certainly not limited to, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Abrams, and the Wachowskis. When it comes to conversations that start on unfavorable footing however, Shyamalan is to mainstream thrillers what Rob Zombie is to mid-level horror. As in, both men instantly earn intense scrutiny for any little thing they do based solely on a predisposed perception, or misperception, of their reputations as quasi-controversial creators.
An exhausting phenomenon occurs whenever either one of these directors becomes involved in a production. All Zombie has to do is merely announce a project and internet comments immediately alight with trolls recycling the same predictable tripe about casting his wife, making cracks about white trash characters, and taking potshots at his music for good measure. Shyamalan can’t release a film without people exhuming the tired discourse that his new feature marks a “return to form” after a string of poorly-received flops. (He’s been returning to form for what seems like four or five movies now.) Ardent admirers contend Shyamalan never “lost it” to begin with, or else muse in lengthy retrospectives about how his maligned movies were “good, actually.” Haters argue “he still sucks” no matter what, never mind having an open mind about his latest effort, if they even bother seeing it at all.
On and on it goes, continually having to prove themselves in someone’s imagination all over again every single time a new title comes out, regardless of their already impressive résumés. For Shyamalan specifically, that’s unjustly the burden he has to bear for breaking out with a huge hit that became its own term in how people talk about film. His albatross is being known as the “Twist Guy,” and folks fooled by “The Sixth Sense” exact revenge by continually daring the filmmaker to dazzle them again, even when Shyamalan only wants to step back to smaller stages to swim in straightforward suspense.
I wonder (not really) how the chronic complainers will choose to criticize Shyamalan’s storytelling in “Old” since it isn’t even his story. (That’s rhetorical, of course. I know the bickering biddies will invent something to berate him about.) Although adapted by Shyamalan into a screenplay where his voice can very much be heard in the dialogue and structure, “Old” is based on the French graphic novel “Sandcastle” by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters.
The setup is simple, and you probably already know all about it. A family of four on a tropical island getaway joins a few other resort guests at a private beach. Everyone ends up stranded in the secluded cove only to discover that the longer they stay there, the older they get due to the mysterious beach’s inexplicable power to rapidly age people.
I often think back to when Siskel and Ebert reviewed “Wolf” with Jack Nicholson and one of them remarked about how refreshing it was that once Nicholson is bitten, he quickly accepts that he is dealing with lycanthropy instead of first running in circles to figure out the obvious. I’ve since come to consciously appreciate when other movies follow suit with mature takes on B-movie concepts and “Old” definitely trots in that territory.
“Old” obviously operates on a far out premise, yet the characters accept that something impossible is occurring almost right off the bat. I suppose they don’t have time to waste since they’re aging at a rate of about two years every hour. But this simultaneously saves us from spinning in a hamster wheel while waiting for them to catch up to what we already know from the single-sentence summary. When central couple Prisca and Guy’s small children grow into teenagers in between head turns, we don’t have to go through any rigmarole where the parents frantically, yet fruitlessly, search for their “real” kids or else accuse these ones of being imposters. Everyone sort of says, “This is happening, and we’d better figure out exactly what this is before it gets worse.”
Prisca does get momentarily stupid about the anomaly. Thankfully, her dumbness dissipates quickly. I can’t imagine what kind of virus she thinks could possibly cause a child to grow two feet while launching into puberty in less time than it takes to bake a pizza. I can’t be certain without a second viewing, but she may have attributed the aging affliction to “something they ate” too. Chalk it up to a parent’s panicked confusion, I guess.
It’s tough to speculate what readers might even want out of a Shyamalan-related review because a prominent portion of them already has their minds made up about the man and his movies. We’re at a point in his career where big breakdowns of individual films have limited usefulness in a semi-sound bite format such as this. Unless you’re somehow unfamiliar with “Unbreakable,” “The Village,” “The Happening,” etc., even peripherally, you know what you’re in for in terms of how Shyamalan paces plots, manages actors to perform peculiarly, and slips in quirks that poke tiny pinholes of levity into persistently tightening tension. Naturally, “Old” is no exception to Shyamalan’s rules.
Like every other movie he makes, it’s incredibly safe to say, if you’re a Shyamalan fan, there’s quite a lot to like here. All of his signature stylings are in play, from quietly creeping dread to a liberal dollop of refrigerator logic behind how the fiction functions. Shyamalan still takes perverse pleasure in playfully positioning his camera to obscure what you really want to see, stressing us out with suspense through purposefully frustrating framing. We even get quick gags like when we remember Alex Wolff is playing a six-year-old in a teenager’s body having amusingly odd ideas about how sex works. Also as usual, Shyamalan keeps the conversation going after end credits roll by introducing a weighty “food for thought” moral dilemma that asks, is it okay to unscrupulously sacrifice one person if that death can save several thousand more lives?
Conversely, those who don’t like Shyamalan will find fault in all the same things identified above. Some of those eye rolls will be rooted in questionable execution while others simply stem from predetermined conclusions that were drawn before the movie began. That’s on them. Everyone should know by now that Shyamalan’s subject matter comes from a well of imagination formed from dark comic books and “Tales from the Crypt”-like terror. Personal entertainment interests either align with his mildly macabre visions or else they don’t. If they do though, “Old” pulls off one of M. Night Shyamalan’s most emotionally impressive “Twilight Zone” tributes yet. Anyone in tune with his tone is highly likely to find the film still swirling in their brains for some time to come, as “Old” offers much to mull over as a slow-burn chiller, but more so as a provocative piece about our relationship with mortality.
Review Score: 75
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.