Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Abbey Lee Kershaw, Rufus Sewell, Aaron Pierre & Alex Wolff
“Directed by M. Night Shyamalan” used to draw an audience. Even if they weren’t necessarily fans of thrillers or horror films, his previous successes with The Sixth Sense and Signs were enough to let people take the chance just off name recognition. This effect has long since gone away and Old (2021) is just another example of a tepid, if not thought-provoking, offering from the one-time titan of the thriller genre.
Old (2021) is a film that follows a family as they go on a slightly mysterious but beautiful vacation on a nameless island. It’s revealed the mother is sick and the parents are planning to separate, treating this trip as their “last hurrah” of sorts. An obviously sinister hotel manager tells them he will send them to a totally private beach for the day, which raises no red flags at all, and so off they go. From here the story picks up its excellent concept. A strange rock formation and mineral deposit cause humans to age rapidly. Not just physically but mentally, emotionally, and internally as well. Illnesses seem to be fast laned, children become teens in mere hours and bodies decompose within the time it takes to have a conversation about the fact someone has died. A truly fascinating idea, and one which clearly has strong foundations in sci/fi-horror. Unfortunately, this good concept is quickly hamstrung by a wicked combination of terrible cinematography, really poor performances from most of the leading cast, and terribly written dialogue.
Seeing this film was penned by the auteur himself, I was expecting at least the quality of a film like Signs or Unbreakable. A simple film with just enough care and thought to make it an enjoyable theater experience. Unfortunately what is brought before us as the audience is more in line with Shyamalan’s infamous adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Apparently, this film was based on a graphic novel, one which I have to assume is more strongly structured and put together plot-wise.
The look of the film is tragic. There are many shots in which the field of view is so smashed in close, the audience can’t even see the entire subject. This also causes the background to often be blurred which then makes it more obvious they are on a soundstage and the ocean and sky are simply graphics put in after the fact. The lighting gives the film a sterile feeling, adding to the confusion and to top it off, the color of the sky changes a few times when it doesn’t chronologically mean to.
The main cast relies on too many child actors for entirely too long. It’s hard to have even one solid performance from a child actor in a film. But there are at least 4 with large roles in the first half and none give any good performances. The main couple as well feels terribly miscast, barely emoting and going through their obvious dialogue with all the joy of someone forced to spout lines that make no sense. Lines like “mom, I’m scared” or “I don’t know what’s going on” when every single thing about the scene has already informed the audience of these things become insulting at this point. A character in an unfathomable situation has no need to remind the audience how confused they are, we are way ahead of them Mr. Shyamalan.
The script also does no favors to any of the cardboard side characters. Examples range from the unfortunate walking stereotype, rapper- “Midsize Sedan” all the way to dementia-stricken, possibly racist and misogynistic doctor Charles.
In spite of all of these glaring flaws, Old (2021) does manage to scrape together a meager handful of good scenes. The viewing experience for this film pendulously swung from these eye roll enduring lines and performances back to really great and scary predicaments that explored the setup with some really smart scenarios. These good scenes are usually pretty brief, but for those super fans of the thriller genre or the writer/director these scenes will make the rest of the issues merely fade away.
Some things however will not. This film has some controversial topics over which it daringly treads with so little tact it’s unsurprising that it fails to even make a difference to the plot overall. There is a scene (which the trailer does spoil) in which two of the children have grown into early adulthood and end up having a child due to many leaps in logic and explanatory “I swear it’ ok because-“ lines. The rest of the scene plays out predictably and does nothing for the plot other than shocking the audience for 4 minutes. The plot simply moves on and never looks back for almost another 45 minutes (which seem eternal in the moment much like the cursed beach) but ends with the least interesting and most obvious twist possible, leaving Old (2021) a shining disappointment among many others.
