Old hits theaters on July 23.
M. Night Shyamalan's Old, which tackles the distinct horrors of aging, ends up being a fascinating entry to the director's spotty career. It may not be his greatest work, but it is one that uses an intriguing premise to tackle profound ideas — ones that probably won’t easily fade away, even when you’re old and gray.
Old follows mother and father Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca (a gripping Vicky Krieps) and their two children — the six-year-old Trent (Nolan River) and 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) — as they venture to a scenic island for a relaxing vacation. Like other Shyamalan films, Old pits nature against humans, and there’s a reason why that’s a tried and true method: it works. The picturesque seaside provides a stark contrast to both the family’s brewing drama and the grim supernatural happenings that start to unfold as people start aging rapidly. All the while, two families are trapped on the beach, surrounded by two natural barriers, effectively eliciting thrills and instilling a sense of dread and hopelessness.
A veteran cast makes much of Old an eye-gluing watch. Each actor must play not just their age, but the age they’ve just transitioned from and the one they're heading towards, sometimes all at once. Take Eliza Scanlen and Alex Wolff, for instance; they’re playing teens experiencing rampant hormones, yet they still think like six-year-olds. It’s a tricky balance to strike – and yet the cast walks that line with aplomb from top to bottom.
Old, adapted from Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters’ graphic novel Sandcastle, is at its best when it’s using the impending threat of death from what would normally be natural causes for scares. It takes real medical issues like dementia, cancer, blindness, and deafness and represents them through sharp sound mixing, capturing the anxieties felt when we notice the ways in which our bodies are breaking down over decades. These premature ailments lead to some gnarly instances of body horror, some of them subtle and some of them gruesomely bone-crunching.
Sometimes, cinematographer Mike Gioluakis discovers creative ways to express those horrors in detail, such as a fractured close-up of the deep lines tracing a character’s face. Even in these close-ups, the aging special effects and makeup hold up, never devolving into a hammy artifice. At other points, though, the camerawork isn’t quite as effective: it will sometimes sway from central characters to a blank vantage point capturing the horizon, which really only serves to undercut a real loss happening on screen.
The other way that Old undermines itself is with its dialogue. Unlike the impenetrable beach entrapping the characters, this plot is far from incomprehensible. In fact, the overabundant and often stiff conversations readily hand over the answers to what should be the most confounding mysteries rather than asking us to connect the dots ourselves. It’s as though Shyamalan is so self-conscious of his reputation for twist endings that go over some people’s heads that he works overtime to diffuse the twists before they explode. The strategy can make Old a frustrating watch.
This plot is far from incomprehensible.
“
Still, there was never a moment where the slow-burn confrontation with mortality wasn’t completely enthralling. The message that we should remain young at heart and quickly move past petty squabbles and empty signifiers of status is a powerful pull. In that regard, Old might be Shyamalan’s most humanist film. It’s less concerned with the puzzles themselves and more with the people running within the mazes. By the end, we’re not meant to care about the mystery or the clues that don’t align. Instead, the overriding thought is to live as though there’s no tomorrow.
