Old (2021)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

To coincide with Shyamalan’s first feature in years, I decided to get a little more intimate with the divisive filmmaker’s body of work. I’ve been doing a bit of a Shyamalan marathon, a Shyama-thon if you will, with some family, and it’s been fascinating seeing the ebb and flow of his career. More than just watching them as individual movies, seeing his style become obvious, his likes and dislikes, and his little quirks all emerge in these movies has been a hell of a ride. There have been high and low points, but regardless of that, this was all a great primer for his latest film Old, a movie that is very much in line with his previous works. Will Old stand the test of time with The Sixth Sense, or crumble into infamy with The Happening? Let’s get into it.

If you’re into horror movies you’ve probably seen the, pretty alright actually, trailer for this one, but I’ll do my best to describe the premise for people unfamiliar with it. A group of people at a tropical resort go to a beach, and while there, they begin to rapidly age. That’s…just about all of the story that I can tell you without getting into spoiler territory. Yeah, it’s one of those kinds of movies. I don’t want to risk giving away anything so I’ll dive straight into my thoughts on Old.

As per usual, I’ll start with what works about this latest Shyamalan outing, starting with the premise. The core concept of this film sets the stage for an interesting story, one which tackles the universal problems of aging, which there is a wealth of material to handle. A lot of neat ideas come through, backed up by some quality cinematography and effects, which capitalizes on the strength of the setup. There’s also a great cast, who are all trying their best, even though they may not always have a ton to work with. With that all out of the way, I’ll get into why I did not like Old at all.

My biggest problem with Old, my problem with a lot of Shyamalan works actually, is that Shyamalan seems to care more about the story than he does the characters within the story. Characters who need to be fleshed out people so we can get into their headspace in this existential horror film are all either cliches or total blank slates without much depth either way. How am I supposed to be invested in characters who have nothing going on other than their most surface-level characteristics? An actuary worried about risks and what might go wrong, a museum curator always living in the past, an arrogant self-important surgeon with a vain trophy wife, none of these people have anything else going on, and I almost zoned out in the theater.

The dialogue is atrocious. You’d be better off putting your hands over your ears and imagining what they’re saying, which I didn’t even have to do because the audio is so strangely mixed and everyone has such a weird accent that I couldn’t understand half of what they were talking about. I don’t wager there was brilliance hidden in that dialogue though, because all I remember hearing was people saying, “Oh no, we are all aging quicker than usual! What do we do about that?” Followed by, “I dunno.” Shyamalan was never the master of character drama or dialogue but you gotta give me something to work with, man. If you can’t think of anything for all these people to say to each other, then maybe there shouldn’t be so many characters?

At the end of the day, Old is fine. It didn’t make me angry, didn’t insult my intelligence, didn’t make me feel like I wasted my time. But it also didn’t grab me, bring me into the story, or leave a lasting impression on me. Maybe I’m just not really into Shyamalan’s style, he certainly has a specific viewpoint and set of themes he loves going back to whenever he makes movies, and I’m glad that he can make what he wants. He clearly likes fairy tales, morality plays, quirky storytelling, and spirituality. I just wish he was able to assemble all that in a way that speaks to me a bit more. If you are really into Shyamalan’s style you might get something out of Old, general audiences would probably want to give this one a pass or wait for it on streaming.

Spoilers On Second Page!