Review
OLD – Review
There is hardly anything scarier to Hollywood, or even to American culture generally, than growing old, and something that makes aging happen much more rapidly would be terrifying. So M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller OLD, where a group of people find themselves on a beach that compresses years of aging into hours, hits a cultural nerve, and has inherent potential for social commentary. Whether this director will use that potential, or even acknowledge it, is a big question going in to seeing this film.
A couple Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and their 6-year-old son Trent (Nolan River) and 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) check in to posh tropical resort for a family vacation. The wife found a deal on resort, and the family is pleased with their find as soon as they arrive, as they immediately are welcomed by the attentive staff with cocktails specially designed for their tastes. While the parents enjoy their cocktails, the kids check out their own candy and beverage bar, where their 6-year-old son Trent meets a boy who lives at the resort with his uncle and a friendship quickly forms.
The family looks happy but it soon becomes clear the pair on the verge of a breakup. Further, the wife has been diagnosed with a slow-growing tumor, although she is the one who is leaving the marriage. The next morning, the resort manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) approaches the family to offer a special treat: a day at a secret private beach hidden in a nature reserve, an excursion only offered to a select few. They gladly accept but as they are loaded into the van, they find they are not the only ones on the outing. Joining them are another couple, a nurse (Ken Leung) and his psychologist wife (Nikki Amuka-Bird ) and the family of a doctor (Rufus Sewell), with his much younger trophy wife (Abbey Lee), their 6-year-old daughter Kara (Mikaya Fischer) and his mother Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant) who has brought along her little dog. The resort provides beach chairs and umbrella, and a very full picnic basket, but no help getting that to the beach. As the driver (director Shyamalan) leaves, he tells them he’ll be back at 5 p.m. to pick them up. All they have to do is follow the path through a slot canyon and down to the beach.
The beach is beautiful as promised but a few odd things turn up right away. For one thing, there is someone already there, an African American man (Aaron Pierre) who looks a bit dazed and turns out to be a hip hop star with the improbable name of Mid-sized Sedan (one of the film’s few touches of humor). Soon become much weirder, and the vacationers quickly figure out the something is aging them (some more quickly than others). They also discover their phones don’t work and when they try to leave, something renders them unconscious. They appear to be trapped.
OLD, which is based on a graphic novel, has a fast-running ticking clock crossed with the familiar device of a group of people stuck together, which gives it a thriller set-up with a sci-fi/horror premise. That the threat is time and age, gives the story an extra twist, opening the door to a host of intriguing possibilities. As you expect, the people on the beach have a number of issues and getting them to work together to solve their mutual problem is a challenge in itself.
Sadly but maybe not surprisingly, Shyamalan largely passes on the social commentary potential and just goes for interpersonal conflict and ticking-clock terror. The film starts out well but then problems develop.
Here’s the problem: the sci-fi premise of M Night Shyamalan’s OLD requires an enormous suspension of disbelief upfront, and I’m fine with that. But then internal inconsistencies keep popping up that you have to keep overlooking. Then there is the surprising passivity of the people trapped in this situation. They quickly become consumed by internal concerns, like the parents’ panic over their children growing up. The few attempts at escape fail but there seems to be little organized effort and more personal introspection. The children seem to age faster than the adults, who hardly show a wrinkle, and there seems to be something about the food. While they hardly show external age, hidden medical conditions advance.
The gifted Gael Garcia Bernal and Vicky Krieps carry most of the dramatic load, creating a touching, layered portrait of a relationship evolving under pressure. Rufus Sewell is good as the arrogant doctor but both he and Abbey Lee as his looks-obsessed trophy wife have one-note characters. The children are played by several actors, including Thomasin McKenzie, who did impressive work in LEAVE NO TRACE and JOJO RABBIT, and Alex Wolff, who play the couple’s children in their teenage years. Embeth Davidtz and Emun Elliot are also good as grown versions of the characters. Ken Leung is a standout in the supporting role as a nurse who tries to bring others together, with strong backing by Nikki Amuka-Bird as his caring psychologist wife.
OLD has a good premise, something with a lot of potential for a thriller – even a thinking person’s thriller – and a very good cast. The film is based on the graphic novel “Sandcastles” and certainly graphic novels have been the basis of some excellent movies and television – think “Watchmen” for example. Unfortunately, OLD abandoned its more interesting potential early, to embrace nonsensical plot elements that are riddled with internal inconsistencies. It is that lack of consistency nags at the viewer, making one ask “but if that happened, why didn’t this happen” – over and over. The repeated suspension of disbelief is exhausting, and patience is quickly exhausted as well. Add in multiple false endings and a revealed conspiracy filled with so much false anti-medicine and anti-science messaging that it is the truly scary thing in this film, and you have a hot mess. Clearly, Shyamalan has never heard of either informed consent laws or medical ethics.
If you can ignore all the inconsistencies, and clearly from the audience reaction at the screening, there are plenty of people who can, then you may be entertained by OLD. But if you can’t stop noticing inconsistencies, wondering why this happens but that doesn’t, and why they do that but not this, or gag on the preposterous villainous reveal, you won’t enjoy this disappointing film because it makes less and less sense as it goes. Shyamalan’s clunker script seems to try to blend teen horror tropes and grown-up thriller ones but the emulsion proves a challenge to keep mixed, or suspended – much like your disbelief.
It’s disappointing because the premise had potential. Most disappointing, even disturbing, is the final reveal, a nauseating false message particularly unsettling in the middle of a pandemic.
OLD is not the worse film Shyamalan has ever made, and many will find it entertaining enough, as did about two-thirds of the audience at the screening. But those hoping the director will strike visionary gold again, like in THE SIXTH SENSE or UNBREAKABLE, will find more of a strike out. OLD opens wide Friday, July 23, at multiple theaters.
RATING: 1.5 out of 4 stars
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