By M. Night Shyamalan’s Covid-era Old enjoys a potent collection of themes that resonate in a time of existential crisis. The film, the latest in the writer-director’s string of mysterious suspense thrillers, each built around an intriguing premise and ending with a twist, follows a group of holidaymakers at a secluded beach where they discover aging is inexplicably accelerated. Suddenly the sun-kissed idyll is breached by panic as this disparate group come to terms with a fate that appears inescapable.
Instead of writing from one of his own original concepts, Shyamalan takes his inspiration from the Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle created by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters. The man behind The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable received Sandcastle as a Father’s Day gift in 2017. In a deal with Universal Pictures in 2019, he announced it would be his next project. Filming took place during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, a strangely fitting backdrop to a piece of movie fiction where the inevitability of death becomes unexpectedly into focus.
That’s where Old generates its appeal. Family relationships are tested, maternal and paternal roles are upended, childhood and adolescence are scrubbed from the record, vanity is exposed as inconsequential, and experience and knowledge ousted by panic and fear. Ultimately, life and time are interwoven; they are as one. Facing one means facing the other.
Shyamalan allows this to play out with the restrained pacing he’s recognised for, his often-motionless camera adding an enigmatic stillness that’s punctuated by a disconcerting line of dialogue off-screen or a reaction shot of a face witnessing the latest puzzling event. The mystery unfolds with agonising unease; a far-reaching horizon of endless ocean and blue sky offering an abnormal sense of enclosure.
But perhaps style and substance are not equally served in Old. The group of characters Shyamalan assembles could be a fitting tribute to his often-criticised stilted, exposition-heavy dialogue. It feels very staged; inorganically constructed as a means to mould conflict around. Because of this it isn’t easy to feel sympathetic towards our stricken protagonists. A number of questionable plot holes also sap the tension.
What brings Old back in line is Shyamalan’s magician-like grip on his twists. He knows what to hide from the audience just as he knows when it’s time to reveal it. As well as a fittingly unanticipated finale, the film is never short on a new revelation. Indeed, it’s held together by its unpredictability. With a satisfying final twist, Old finds a way to prevail over its shortcomings.
DIRECTED BY: M. Night Shyamalan
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