Within the past few years, we’ve observed the resurgence of M. Night Shyamalan as one of the most innovative filmmakers working today. After a few failed stints in large-scale blockbuster cinema with his live-action adaptation of The Last Airbender and After Earth, the director kept it simple with his 2015 found-footage horror flick The Visit. This allowed him to experiment with the medium and produce an effective film led by great performances from Ed Oxenbould and Olivia DeJonge. It wasn’t until his conclusion to the Eastrail 177 trilogy, Glass, where Shyamalan made something as spectacular as the first film in that trilogy, Unbreakable. Shyamalan’s films are always met with a somewhat mixed critical response, but you can’t deny that, even if the overall project (and its twists!) didn’t work for you, he at least tried to do something different than the usual IP-driven blockbusters that dominate our screens today. His latest film, Old, has the same minimalist feel of The Visit and Split, and is Shyamalan’s answer to a classic body horror film with superb performances and visual style.
Right from its opening sequence, a sentiment of unease permeates the Cappa family’s arrival to a beach resort as they will spend their vacation here. Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) will be divorcing after their holiday, and are mainly doing this so their children, Trent (Nolan River) and Maddox (Alexa Swinton), can have happy memories about the time they were together. After the hotel manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) recommends a private beach with stunning views of the ocean, the family decides to take the visit with another party, comprised of Charles (Rufus Sewell), Chrystal (Abbey Lee), their daughter Kara (Kyle Bailey) and Charles’ mother (Kathleen Chalfant). After Trent stumbles upon a dead body of a girl in the water and Charles’ mother suddenly dies, with no explanation, the families believe something wrong is happening. They quickly accuse Brendan (Aaron Pierre), a bystander who was there when the families arrived on the beach, of killing the girl. This changes when the children (now played by Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, and Eliza Scanlen) inexplicably grow to be teenagers, while the parents age quickly. Are they hallucinating or is the beach making the guests old? Whatever it is, the families must put their differences aside and try to find a way to get out of it, before time runs out.
Right from the get-go, Shyamalan establishes his lens on the faces of its main actors and will never block away from them. He re-teams with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis (who shoots on 35mm film this time around) to give the film its unique look and feel. As Prisca looks at the kids having fun having fun with Guy, you already know something’s wrong with the couple just by the expression on her face. The children will retain happy memories of the vacation, but what about her? What will happen after the vacation? Divorce, which means massive uncertainty for the children and an unstable life, after living in stability and comfort with both parents since they were born. All of that is conveyed through one look, captured through Gioulakis’ immaculate lens.
Even during the film’s most gruesome sequences, the camera never looks away from the actors’ faces, instead of directly showing what they are being confronted with. As Scanlen’s Kara suddenly gives birth to a baby, we’re not seeing her go into labor, but rather the frightened faces of everyone who has no idea how to process what’s going on. The sheer terror of any situation in Old doesn’t need to be conveyed through quite gruesome imagery (even though a tumor removal sequence does that a little too well here), as the characters’ reactions are enough to make any situation terrifying. Shyamalan meticulously crafts every pin drop of chaos like an opera of terror, in which he hooks its audience in with the most preposterous premise possible, a beach that makes you old, only for it to be more terrifying as the film progresses.
If it doesn’t make you old, it’ll surely make you lose your mind, as every exit seems to be protected by some sort of energy that makes the characters black out and awaken back in the sand. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, out comes Shyamalan with another pin drop to deepen the beach’s chaotic setting. There’s no way out, everyone feels boxed in, and time is running out. What else can possibly go wrong? Everything does, and it all happens faster than anyone can stop to catch their breath or assess the situation. Everyone starts to panic, which leads to chaos on top of more chaos and an overall detachment from what’s real and isn’t. Shyamalan draws heavily from The Twilight Zone and David Lynch’s signature trademarks of unnatural line deliveries, where odd pauses in the middle of a conversation amplify the film’s eerie atmosphere.
Some critics have dismissed Old’s performances as lackluster or bland, but Shyamalan’s goal is to make the audience feel as uncomfortable as possible, especially when they arrive at the beach. The performances are never bland, and in fact are some of the best work Garcia Bernal, Krieps, and Sewell have done in recent memory. Sewell in particular shines above his co-stars, progressively losing his mind at the sight of his mother dying unexpectedly and seeing his child give birth to a baby who’ll die within the minute it’s born. Ken Leung, who plays Jarin, has a sequence where his acting is so detached from the rest, adding to the film’s unease, as he is perplexed when the children say they are six, when they look much older than that. Everything comes full circle as the film’s acting is complemented by Gioulakis’ dynamic lens and masterful sound design that carefully places the actors inside different speakers to engulf audiences trapped in the darkness of a theatrical setting inside the beach with its characters.
M. Night is mostly known for his plot twists which mostly arrive near the end of the film. He blew audiences away with The Sixth Sense’s ending, which remains one of the most memorable plot twists in cinema history. Without spoiling its ending, Old’s twist hinders the film’s momentum, the unrelenting chaos it sets up during its first two acts, and an incredibly terrifying sequence opening the last act. After being petrified at the sight of time flashing by the characters’ very eyes, a big reveal was definitely going to happen sooner or later. And yet, as we progressively understand what happened and how the film’s puzzle pieces start to make some sense, everything feels rather cold and emotionless. The audience has been subjected to pure terror and catharsis for a good hour and a half, so it’s obviously time to blow them away and get the audience talking about what they’ve witnessed. However, as it ends, neither shock nor surprise was elicited from me, being particularly underwhelmed by how Shyamalan curveballs his audience who expect something grand for the exact opposite. It’s hard not to spoil it, as it’s best to go in cold, but I’ll say that it’s one of Shyamalan’s most interesting endings he’s done in a while, even if it didn’t really work out for me.
That’s what I love about the man. Even if some of his films weren’t great, and some of his twists are completely baffling, at least he tries to do something that veers off mainstream blockbuster-driven “content” and pours his heart and soul into every production he makes. You can see it right from the get-go in Old, from its spotless cinematography establishing the film’s brilliant tension imbued from the cast’s highly memorable performances. It’s definitely not a film everyone will like, as many will be divided by the ending, but it’s one of the most unique productions of the year that cements Shyamalan as one of the most daring filmmakers of our time. Early in his career, he was branded as “The Next Spielberg.” There’s only one problem: no one can make films like Spielberg. And no one can make films like Shyamalan either.
