Old: M. Night Shyamalan’s Latest Twist-Ending Thriller More Silly Than Scary

By Kim Hughes

Rating: C

There is a certain decency of purpose in writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, Old, even as its early jump-scares, left turns, and red-herrings eventually give way to a ludicrous finale.

There is also a certain frustration in chronicling a Shyamalan film without giving away its hallmark twist ending to fully corroborate such a harsh judgement. The twist is the main reason most people see Shyamalan films. It is definitely the best reason to see Old, although not for the reason the filmmaker may have intended. Really, its silliness is towering.

Let’s just say Old is more rewarding when approached for its morality than for its plot which may be the biggest head-scratcher of them all — there is conceptual promise here. That said, I immediately felt compelled to watch the film a second time just to be sure of what I’d seen, which I suppose augurs well for its box office potential.

The bones of the story are laid out in the trailer. A Philadelphia-based family of four headed by Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps…. these two got married? Is chemistry not a thing anymore?) set off on a three-day holiday to a swanky, apparently Caribbean resort Prisca found online and that all agree is “better than Cancun” but is at an unnamed location.

On their first morning at breakfast, the family is approached by the resort’s manager who alerts them to a secret beach that has everything, thereby solving their problem of conflicting agendas between six-year-old Trent and 11-year-old Maddox (played by various actors as they age).

We already know the family’s happy veneer is somewhat precarious; Guy and Prisca argued the night before in the suite. There’s a health issue. But the beach will surely be a cure-all for everyone.

Boarding a shuttle (driven by the director in a trademark cameo), the family discovers they are not the only guests headed for the secret beach. There are, among others, a nurse/psychologist husband and wife pair — the latter prone to frightening epileptic seizures — an adult doctor with his aged mother… the kind of variety pack of wildly different strangers one might also expect to find in House on Haunted Hill or Hateful Eight.

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The driver, who leaves them with an inordinate amount of food for a single afternoon — a point noted by Guy, the statistics-spouting insurance actuary — says he will return to collect them at five. But we know nobody is going home at five. And you can bet there’s no cellphone reception thanks to the wall of rock surrounding the pristine sand and surf.

And so Old explores its title. People start aging, fast, with the kids the first to physically accelerate through time, even as everyone stays in place on the beach during this single day. Personal items left behind suggest these visitors aren’t the first to visit this scary strip of sand. So why were they taken there? And how do they get out?

As troubling and increasingly urgent questions mount, physical changes are exacerbated by mental breakdowns, notably by the increasingly unhinged beforementioned doctor (Rufus Sewell).

Attempts to escape the beach are thwarted by an unseen buy intuited presence; things quickly go south, and bodies pile up, though in many cases not before undergoing some rad changes. Again, the kids fare worst at first but anyone able to play the long game will have a heck of a story to tell.

The movie’s time-warp continuum idea and its underlying message, about living in the present and appreciating the moment, are both rich and worth pondering. Old also smacks down an industry well-known in the real world for its mind-boggling insidiousness though clearly with better strategic planning in place than what we have here. There is also something in here about being very careful with your online purchases.

I have not read the graphic novel Sandcastle upon which Old is based so I can’t vouch for its faithfulness to the source material. But it’s hard to believe anyone would call this a winner.

Old. Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, and Rufus Sewell. Opens in theatres July 23.