Horror and thriller movies may prey on our fears – axe murderers, stalkers, ghosts, and ventriloquist dummies – but the odds of actually encountering any of those things are, well, negligible.
But ageing? That’s inevitable.
With every breath inhaled, every syllable uttered, and every step taken, our cells are deteriorating. We wake up in the mornings and it takes longer to spring out of bed. Stand for too long and our lower backs let us know it.
If we’re lucky, most of us have decades to experience the drawn-out process. But what if you only had 24 hours?
That’s the treatise at the heart of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film, Old.
Inspired by graphic novel Sandcastles by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, the uneven thriller Old follows a group of people staying at a ritzy island resort.
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There’s Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and their young children Trent and Maddox. Guy and Prisca are going through a rough patch and they want to give their kids one fun holiday before separating.
Also, at the resort are big-noting doctor Charles (Rufus Sewell) and his wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee), and their young daughter Kara. Plus, his mother Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant) and her little terrier.
Rounding out the group are psychiatrist Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and nurse Jarin (Ken Leung).
On their second day, the holidayers are dropped off at an isolated beach on the other side of the island, accessible only through a narrow passageway between towering rock formations which surround the sand.
Relaxing in the sun and frolicking in the water turns to horror when a dead body floats by. And then other things start to become weird – like the kids ageing into teenagers in a matter of hours (and now portrayed by Thomasin McKenzie, Alex Wolff and Eliza Scanlen).
Something on that beach is making everyone there age roughly one year every 30 minutes, and they can’t seem to leave. It’s a race (ooh, people who actually know something is a race!) against the biggest enemy of all, time.
Shyamalan is known for his narrative twists, and while the source material for Old doesn’t have a neat resolution, the filmmaker behind The Sixth Sense and Signs writes one for the film so that audiences looking for answers will get one.
Whether that big reveal is satisfying or anticlimactic isn’t really the point, because Old is much more about what happens on the beach, rather than the how or why.
The rapid ageing is merely a plot device to explore the characters’ reactions to the truncated life spans, but also the abject horror of their quickly worsening bodies. From the fast onset of mental disorders to the loss of sight or hearing, it’s more frightening than a jump scare or a lurking shadow in the background.
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The story doesn’t always stitch together because the characterisations are fleeting, especially outside of the core family group of Guy, Prisca, Maddox and Trent. Consequently, there’s only shallow investment in their peril.
You don’t necessarily care if they survive or not, despite a cracker cast with the likes of Bernal, Krieps and McKenzie who naturally draw on your compassion.
Instead, there’s neon-posted dialogue such as “stop wishing away this moment” and “you’re too young” and some awkward transitions from one scene to another.
But if you can push that all aside to take Old on purely for its visceral thrills, there are some to be had.
Even when Shyamalan’s thematic ambitions fail, he’s always been an interesting visual filmmaker. In Old he uses lots of wide-angle, sweeping shots and cutaways to convey the discombobulation felt by the characters. His style is effective in making audiences feel unsettled.
And the glaring sunshine of more than half the movie only drives home that all is not right, and you can’t hide from it. But he is hampered by the singular beach setting – a location choice that was likely born from shooting in the middle of the pandemic – in terms of keeping it dynamic.
Old isn’t terrifying in the traditional horror sense – though a few of the characters die truly ye gods, horrifying deaths – but there is something intriguing in its premise about how time takes away everything. It just hasn’t been fully realised.
Rating: 2.5/5
Old is in cinemas now (excluding lockdown areas)
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2021-07-22 08:11:12Z
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