When M. Night Shyamalan’s Old was released last year, it was met with a mixed reception. Some praised its suspenseful visual style while others dismissed it as a silly, high-concept summer film with awkward expositional dialogue. Many considered the plot to be absurd — a group of people are trapped on a beach resort where they rapidly age towards death. The reaction to Old is representative of Shyamalan as a divisive filmmaker, with many taking issue with his characterization choices and dialogue. Instead of getting naturalistic performances out of his actors, Shyamalan aims for a stylized approach where characters often say exactly what is happening onscreen. For some, this comes across as forced and makes the characters feel wooden. However, in many of his films, this unsettling depiction of speech gets at a deep, visceral level of human emotion. In Old, he taps into collective fears of death and grief to make the film’s horror imagery even more terrifying.
Old was one of the first studio wide-releases to be filmed entirely during the pandemic. The film was shot at a single location in the Dominican Republic under a COVID-19 production bubble. Shyamalan put together a small cast of actors and mostly filmed outdoors or in large, open spaces. This production process informed the story’s pandemic sensibilities. With this context, the film could be seen in a new light where the collective experience of seclusion during the pandemic mirrored the characters’ feelings of distress over being trapped on the beach. To make matters worse, the characters don’t know why they are being confined or how to escape. This confusion reflects society’s reaction to the virus where many feel helpless in their attempts to return to a relative state of normality, allowing COVID conspiracy theories, vaccine and mask resistance, and alternative therapies to proliferate.
Throughout history, art has offered a space to work through the experience of living through similar crises to the current pandemic. They offer an opportunity to contemplate the harsh realities of the world, incite change, or look towards a more hopeful future. In the 1920s, art like The Waste Land was perturbed by events such as World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic. The 1930s brought works like Guernica that memorialized victims in the Spanish civil war, and the 1950s and ‘60s featured art that reckoned with the threat of nuclear warfare. The 2020s may very much be concerned about society’s reaction to the pandemic, with its art attempting to process the changes in the way people experience life.
This time period has been characterized by constant exposure to news reports of rapid increases in hospitalizations and deaths. While governments fail to provide sufficient resources to those in need, social media platforms spread misinformation about the virus. In the age of doomscrolling, the pandemic is nothing short of exhausting, and with new variants emerging with every season, it seems that it will not end anytime soon.
Shyamalan captures this anxiety by forcing his characters into a constant state of alarm as they are faced with unexplainable and unstoppable forces. With no obvious way to get off the beach, the vacationers are stuck in their perpetual hell. Shyamalan and cinematographer Mike Giuolakis shoot the characters’ faces in close-up to focus on their reactions of distress and disbelief as they are unable to protect their loved ones from the consequences of rapid aging. The camera frantically shifts between characters where each time something has changed, often unpredictably so and outside of their control. Giuolakis also pushes the actors beyond the edges of the screen, almost as if they’re changing too fast for the eye to comprehend. These unrestrained shifts bring about a feeling of panic as the characters, much like people today, are unable to understand the new state of their world.
Many of the film’s technical aspects also add to this sense of apprehension. Through the use of the film’s score, Shyamalan and composer Trevor Gureckis weaves tension into every scene, juxtaposing the beauty of the beach resort with the horror of the vacationers’ predicament. The sounds of chilling tremolo strings are only heightened by booming bass and frantic percussion. In addition, Sean Garnhart’s sound design forms an eerie soundscape by mixing the wails of human suffering with the ever-present sounds of ocean waves, creating a world that simply marks the progression of time, unfeeling towards the characters’ plight.
This unrelenting feeling of unease is further exacerbated by being forced to experience much of it alone. Social distancing has prevented many from seeing their friends, families, and communities. With communication limited to online messaging and Zoom calls, once robust support systems have collapsed. In the absence of social connection, the pandemic has been defined by surges in chronic loneliness and resulting mental health concerns including stress, anxiety, and depression.
These circumstances are similar to that of the beachgoers in Old, as being trapped on the beach pushes them towards feelings of panic. Shyamalan physically boxes his characters in by placing the ocean on one side and a wall of rocky cliffs on the other. Some characters fail to handle this pressure and desert the main group, withdrawing into their own feelings of paranoia and despair. Without emotional support, these characters can only cope in destructive ways by desperately attempting to escape the beach alone or acting out in violent fits of rage.
Social isolation has not only led to a wide array of added stressors but an absence of new experiences. Under social distancing, life feels shorter as days pass with little to no significance. This plays into the universal fears of aging and mortality as they are often intertwined with feelings of loss and regret. Parents, who were once terrified of their children aging too quickly, soon become the subject of their own children’s fears as they inevitably grow old and pass away. This anxiety is worsened in today’s world as even young and healthy individuals fall ill to the virus. The ongoing pandemic increases uncertainty in the future and is capable of threatening people’s lives and well-being in an instant.
The film taps into these collective worries by pressing the fast-forward button on the beachgoers’ time to live. In the bonus features of Old’s home release, Shyamalan stated that he used his camera as a representation of the passage of time. The camera pans across the beach, independent of the film’s action, much like how time ticks by regardless of whether one wants it to or not. The group desperately fights against their rapid aging, trying to stop something that is inescapable. Old mirrors this fear of mortality through elements of body horror and violence – a psychologist dies from a seizure, two people drown, a cantaloupe-sized tumor is excised from a woman, a man is stabbed to death, a woman breaks her bones, leaving her body permanently contorted, and a baby is born and dies in a matter of seconds. Much like the current pandemic, these gruesome images depict the terrifying realization that one’s body is fragile and temporary.
By isolating people to their own thoughts, the pandemic has allowed some room for self-reflection. It has led many to question prior individual and communal value systems as well as evaluate past mistakes and dreams for the future. In Old, the central couple undergoes this self-evaluation. Their marriage is falling apart as they grow frustrated with each other’s inadequacies, but on the beach, they face the existential reality that their family and children are impermanent. As the couple age towards their deaths, their capacity for empathy and understanding grows. Through their experiences on the beach, they come to value the relationship that they had. In this way, Shyamalan offers something greater than the fear of aging and death – the support of a community and the love of a family. The characters that make this realization stop running from their inevitable deaths and come to see the beauty of living in the moment.
Through exploring the different thoughts and feelings brought about by the pandemic, Shyamalan creates a piece of authentic art for the world today. He achieves a visceral level of horror by examining the trappings of anxiety, fear, and grief that manifest from the characters’ time on the beach. However, Old refuses to view the current times with pessimism. Instead, Shyamalan offers a hopeful look at a future where introspection, community, and family are pushed to the forefront. In this way, Old is a film that is not only relevant but necessary in navigating the emotional turmoil of the pandemic.
