OLD Review
Hey now! It’s “the beach that makes you old” movie I’ve been hearing so much about! Genuinely funny memes aside, it’s always an exciting time when a new M. Night Shyamalan movie comes out because whether it’s mind-blowingly good or “can’t look away” terrible, most, if not all of the storied director’s works end up being memorable in some form or fashion. In the case of his newest work, the bluntly titled OLD, what Shyamalan cooks up falls somewhere in the middle of his best and his worst, unevenly taking trips to both sides of the filmmaker’s talents and flaws.
Adapted from the graphic novel, SANDCASTLE, created by Pierre-Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, Shyamalan dips his toes in horror-tinged waters (an area he has found his most impressive moments in) in the account of one family’s tragic trip to the beach…that happens to make you old. After some window dressing that introduces Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and their two children, Trent (Nolan River) and Maddox (Alexa Swinton), it’s not long before the filmmaker casts their fates toward a mysterious beach that comes to them through an innocuous suggestion from the manager at the tropical resort they’re currently staying at. Isolated and beautiful, Shyamalan, with help from Mike Gioulakis’ foreboding cinematography, immediately drifts towards a malevolent mood that the beach holds. Not that Guy and Prisca nor their kids notice as they, along with a cluster of other random hotel guests — Rufus Sewell’s asshole doctor, his much younger girlfriend (Abbey Lee), another plain couple (Ken Leung and Nikki Amuka-Bird), and a SoundCloud rapper (Aaron Pierre) — immediately start relaxing and running around, as you usually do at a beach.
Thankfully, Shyamalan pushes things along well enough past his wonky (and at times, general cringe-inducing) expository dialogue towards what we all came to see: a beach that makes the people who walk on it old. When the aging starts, it comes fast and furious, shuttling everyone on the beach through their age points and towards their withered, inevitable end. In these moments, where adults quickly become geriatrics or children skip towards their own adulthood right in front of their horrified parents, Shyamalan guides OLD to its horrific and existential ambitions. And yet, for every intoxicating shot (Gioulakis’ camerawork here is bracing and stimulating) or genuinely unsettling moment (see: the idea of having a baby on a beach that makes you old) that Shyamalan offers, those moments are constantly at odds with the patented flaws that are bound to pop up in any of the filmmaker’s other lesser works.
At this point, it seems that Shyamalan just can’t get his performers to act as anything other than aloof and alienating husks. This cold approach to acting sometimes fits the Shyamalan mold perfectly (see: Bruce Willis’ wrenching performance in UNBREAKABLE) but here, due in part to an overall editing pace that makes events occur at jagged, disorienting intervals, the performances across the board edge close to the performances seen in THE HAPPENING instead. Despite an impressive cast at his disposal, it’s clear that Shyamalan has these performers acting only slightly put off by supernatural events on purpose and as a result, OLD becomes a film with interesting ideas surrounded by brain-dead acting. Even so, the casting choices made here, especially for the carousel of performers who go on to play the rapidly aging children, are impressive in how the looks and performances of each shifting actor accurately embodies the same character at different ages, with the much older versions of Trent and Maddox, in particular, evoking a world-wearied mood that is effective in spite of the fact that these once 6 and 11-year-olds have just turned to middle-aged adults in the span of hours.
Despite the film’s constant battle with itself, Shyamalan almost sticks the landing with a third act that almost tenderly approaches its terrifying conceit with a quiet and tragic ending. Of course, the filmmaker gets in his own way towards crafting a film with an interesting grappling with its story by having the film go on a few moments longer than needed, neatly tying things up in a way that is amazing in just how clean the director/writer ends things. For a story like this, a little darkness may have made things more memorable but what’s left is an interesting idea approached by an interesting director and turned into a movie that slaps amongst a variety of uneven waves. It’s not the worst trip you could take — that honor would go to the trip where you actually go to the beach that makes you old — but it sadly isn’t the memorable one the filmmaker might want you to have.
2.5/5
