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M. night shyamalan’s ‘old’: film review.

Starring Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, the filmmaker's latest contrasts a lush tropical destination with a baffling disease of the flesh.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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Landing somewhere between The Happening and The Village on the Shyamalanometer of Narrative Gimmickry, M. Night Shyamalan ’s Old places a dozen or so travelers together on a remote beach, then watches them live the rest of their lives in a day. Facing a strange phenomenon that greatly accelerates the aging process, strangers must collaborate in search of escape even as time worsens their deficiencies and the director strains (with ostentatious camera movement and some stunning scenery) to keep things from feeling like a Twilight Zone morality play.

Viewers who can take it at face value may find a chill or two here, but ultimately Old can’t escape the goofiness of its premise long enough to put its more poetic possibilities across successfully.

Full credits

Production company: Blinding Edge Pictures Distributor: Universal Pictures Cast: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abbey Lee, Aaron Pierre, Kathleen Chalfant, Alexa Swinton, Nolan River, Kylie Begley, Embeth Davidtz, Eliza Scanlen, Alex Wolff, Emun Elliott, Thomasin McKenzie Director-Screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan Producers: M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock Executive Producer: Steven Schneider Director of photography: Mike Gioulakis Production designer: Naaman Marshall Costume designer: Caroline Duncan Editor: Brett M. Reed Composer: Trevor Gureckis Casting director: Douglas Aibel

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“Old,” Reviewed: M. Night Shyamalan’s New Old-School Sci-Fi Movie

By Richard Brody

Just as it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken , it takes a smart filmmaker to make a stupid movie, which I mean in the best possible way. Science-fiction films, once a cinematic counterpart to pulp fiction, are today often big-budget, overproduced spectacles that substitute grandiosity for imagination. M. Night Shyamalan ’s new film, “Old” (which opens in theatres on Friday), is different. His frequent artistic pitfall is complication—the burdening of stories with extravagant yet undeveloped byways in order to endow them with ostensible significance and to stoke exaggerated effects. With “Old,” facing the constraints of filming during the pandemic —on a project that he’d nonetheless planned before it—Shyamalan has created a splendid throwback of a science-fiction thriller that develops a simple idea with stark vigor and conveys the straight-faced glee of realizing the straightforward logic of its enticing absurdity.

The movie, based on the graphic novel “ Sandcastle ,” by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, is centered on a tropical beach resort in an unnamed country. (Filming was done in the Dominican Republic.) There, the Capa family—a near-middle-aged couple, Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and Guy (Gael García Bernal), their eleven-year-old daughter, Maddox (Alexa Swinton), and their six-year-old son, Trent (Nolan River)—arrives for a vacation in a state of emotional stress and stifled conflict that’s already on view in a van ride on a road lined with palm trees. At the gleaming hotel, the family is met by an obsequious manager (Gustaf Hammarsten), who, backed by a line of smiling staffers, plies the parents with cocktails from a prompt server named Madrid (Francesca Eastwood). The attention is too great, the welcome suspiciously wrong—it’s obvious to viewers, if not to the Capas, that something is amiss.

Trent, a quirkily earnest and precocious kid who’s in the habit of asking adults their names and “occupations,” quickly befriends another boy in the lobby. His name is Idlib (Kailen Jude), and he’s the manager’s lonely nephew, whose furtive solitude is also an evident warning sign. Prisca and Guy seem obliviously delighted with the luxury, but they’re also distracted by their troubles: the vacation is something of a last hurrah, because they’re on the verge of splitting up. (There’s also something up with Prisca’s health that they haven’t told the children.) The emotional shadows are dispelled when the manager offers the family a day trip to a secluded, secret beach—a place that he claims few guests get to see. Yet they’re joined by another family in the van that takes them there—a high-powered cardiothoracic surgeon named Charles (Rufus Sewell), his wife, Chrystal (Abbey Lee), her mother (Kathleen Chalfant), and their young daughter, Kara (Kylie Begley). (The van’s driver is played by Shyamalan himself.)

There’s a long and eerie walk from the drop-off spot through a grotto to the beach, which is indeed splendid. But then other people turn up, including a psychologist named Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird), who has severe epilepsy; her partner, Jarin (Ken Leung), who is a nurse; and also a well-known rapper called Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre). Then a corpse turns up, and then rusted-out cutlery that evokes the visits of other, earlier guests. Later, a few other odd events introduce the movie’s key idea: suddenly, the children start growing up very quickly. In a few hours, Trent looks like a big kid of eleven and Maddox looks like a high-school student. Then the adults start aging rapidly, too, and the panic that sets in is amplified when Charles gets hold of a knife, in a “ Lord of the Flies ”-like power trip, and when the group starts to experience strange, accelerated medical symptoms.

Shyamalan takes conspicuous pleasure in cannily graphic visual compositions, emphasizing significant details without isolating them from the film’s keenly observed settings, which evoke troubled states of mind in a jolting glance. (His own enthusiastic attentions in imagining and crafting the movie’s elements are infectious, and the movie is as much fun to recall as it is to watch.) The timing of reveals, the use of the soundtrack to cue offscreen events, and the deployment of basic effects to conjure inner experience express his delight in primal cinematic power. Shyamalan’s simplest and best coup de cinéma is his depiction of children aging years in the span of mere hours. What he does is change the casting, from one shot to the next—older versions of the kids are played by different actors (Thomasin McKenzie as the older Maddox, Mikaya Fisher and Eliza Scanlen as older versions of Kara, and Luca Faustino Rodriguez and Alex Wolff as growing Trents). The adults age, too, and the visual effects to show it are matched by the emotional effects of encroaching mortality. There’s some just-short-of-gore medical fantasy that veers from the simple wonder of cutaneous special effects to the macabrely skeletal to the over-the-top surgical. There’s the calamity of mental illness and an ugly element of racism that goes with it. There’s the grim realization that the beach’s supernatural powers are no accident but part of a scheme, and, as the aging process and its related agonies begin to take their toll, there are practical efforts to organize defense and resistance when the sense of a large-scale dirty trick takes hold among the survivors.

The working out of the plot and the inevitable then-there-were-none-like attrition of the group brought to and trapped on the private beach lead to some coy narrative trickery, and also to some ultimate twists that are both logical and ridiculous. “Old” takes place in a dramatic bubble that, if it’s poked a touch too hard, will quickly pop, but while it’s afloat it’s both iridescent and melancholy. The modes of loss that Shyamalan dramatizes range from the confusion of sudden adolescence and the anguish of onrushing decrepitude and death to the merely uncanny sense that unexpected pleasures are too good to be true. The economy of the premise leads Shyamalan (whose own role in the film proves exuberantly droll) to unleash images of a simple but extreme expressivity, culminating in one that I’ll be thinking about for a while—a tracking shot, on the beach, that sticks with the action at times and departs from it at others, and that, in its evocation of time in motion, reminds me of the inspirations of a modernist master of visualized time, Alain Resnais . Shyamalan reaches such a peak only once in the film, but it’s a brief high that few filmmakers ever even approach.

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Old, review: A provocative horror that brings out the best and worst in M Night Shyamalan

‘sixth sense’ maestro seems more concerned with avoiding any potential plot holes than creating wonder, article bookmarked.

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Dir: M Night Shyamalan. Starring: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abbey Lee. 15, 108 mins.

M Night Shyamalan still can’t quite shake his reputation as the king of plot twists. It doesn’t matter what he’s done in the decades since Haley Joel Osment saw dead people. The label has stuck. And it’s not quite a fair one. Shyamalan shouldn’t be defined by his twists, but by his constant unpredictability. It’s a subtle but important difference. What makes his horror films so effective – when they’re at their best, at least – is that he allows his stories to exist in a sense of perpetual tension. At any moment, the path might change. They could slip wildly into a different genre. New nightmares could emerge from any corner. What determines whether a Shyamalan film is good or bad is how he deals with that build-up of terror. Does he let it linger menacingly in the air? Or try to soothe it out of his audience’s minds with a tidy ending? Old , in that sense, brings out both the best and worst in him.

In its opening scene, we’re introduced to what should be a blissful scenario: a wealthy, nuclear family on a tropical vacation. The parents, Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps), gaze adoringly as their young children zoom around their hotel room. But the camera sits waiting on the outside, watching them through the windows, pacing up and down like a jaguar readying for the kill. What hidden torment will soon be revealed to us? Old feels like a repeat of Shyamalan’s 2004 film The Village – it’s provocative and inventive right until the point the director retreats into narrative neatness and conventional emotions.

A manager suggests the family spend the day at a private beach – one of those little-known hotspots that all holidaymakers crave. They’re soon joined by a second family – a doctor ( Rufus Sewell ), his mother (Kathleen Chalfant) and his modelesque wife (Abbey Lee), plus his young child. A little later, another couple, played by Ken Leung and Nikki Amuka-Bird, arrive. A dead body, floating facedown in the water, is the real starting point for Old ’s reign of terror. There’s a man, too, crouched in the shadows, who nervously reveals himself to be a popular rapper called Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre) – it’s unclear whether the name is intended as a joke or just a sign of cultural disconnect.

But there’s a strangeness that starts to consume these people the very second they step foot on the beach. They can’t quite put their finger on it. But their bodies simply don’t quite feel like their bodies any more. The truth is that their cells have started to age rapidly – the reason why is part of the great mystery Shyamalan knows his audience will be eager to solve. Although the film is actually an adaptation of the Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle , by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, the director has provided his own resolution to the story.

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All the implicit themes at play here – not only of our general fears of ageing, but of the doomed inevitability that our medical histories create – run strongly throughout Old . There’s a primal potency to them. But the film, just like The Village , suffers from Shyamalan’s desire to forever chase a sense of order within the universe. Sometimes this can actually be quite refreshing – Old is the rare horror where the characters are all hypercompetent – but Shyamalan’s persistent refusal to leave behind any wonder, or instability, ultimately strips Old of its staying power. He seems more concerned with avoiding any potential plot hole that might send Reddit users into a rage than he does in creating something emotionally satisfying. It’s hard to talk about his films as something more than their endings when it’s the endings that always seem to decide their fate.

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What a drag it is getting Old in M. Night Shyamalan’s spooky new thriller

Gael García Bernal and Alex Wolff in Old

“They grow up so fast” is a comfy parental platitude with a terrible truth lurking behind it, like a mask pulled over a grinning skull. To say the euphemistic words aloud is to acknowledge the bitter ephemerality of life—the fact that, before you know it, your button-cute kids will be adults with thinning hair and sagging midsections, hurtling towards oblivion just a step behind you. This grim reality looms as large as a blazing sun over Old , the new supernatural thriller written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Set largely on a secluded, anomalous stretch of sand and water where everyone ages at time-lapse speed, the film has flashes of clumsiness that should be familiar to those who have stepped before into the Twilight Zone of its maker’s imagination. But Old is also, in its most intense moments, one of his most genuinely disturbing visions: a horror movie about that most universal of horrors, inescapable mortality.

In his last picture, the somewhat unfairly derided Glass , Shyamalan earnestly, eccentrically meditated on the mythos of comic books. This time, he’s found inspiration in an actual comic: the French graphic novel Sandcastle , from which he borrows a basic plot outline but not a stylistic strategy. (The lush greens and shimmering crystal blues here are a far cry from the stark black-and-white imagery of Frederik Peeters’ artwork.) Source material aside, the film feels quintessentially Shyamalan from the jump, perhaps especially in its hiccups. Old gets off to a bumpy start, with a series of awkwardly expository scenes introducing Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca ( Phantom Thread ’s Vicky Krieps), traveling with their children, 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and 6-year-old Trent (Nolan River), to a tropical resort. “You have a beautiful voice,” Mom tells her daughter. And then, in the first instance of ominous foreshadowing: “I can’t wait to hear it when you’re older.”

In the two decades since The Sixth Sense made him a household name, Shyamalan hasn’t much improved at writing dialogue. His characters still speak a stilted language of blunt emotional declaration and corny one-liners, periodically sounding like aliens approximating human interaction. But in Old , the anti-naturalistic clang of the exchanges eventually starts to contribute to the general nightmare vibe of Shyamalan’s scenario. At the manager’s suggestion, the family ends up decamping for a private swim on the other end of the island, joining a small group of fellow guests that includes a racist surgeon (Rufus Sewell), his bombshell wife (Abbey Lee), their grade-school-aged daughter (Kylie Begley), a SoundCloud rapper (Aaron Pierre), and a few others. “Something is going on with time on this beach,” one of them dimly, belatedly deduces, long after the adults start collecting wrinkles and their children start racing towards puberty at world-record speed.

This is about as close to pure allegory as Shyamalan has ever strayed. His wizening beach is nothing less than life itself as a physical space, with every milestone and humiliation of the aging process crammed into a single, dreadfully condensed day. Symbolic though this premise may be, the film devises several visceral, diabolical dilemmas from it: An emergency surgery is complicated by the fact that wounds close up in a matter of seconds, while the onset of dementia is horrifically accelerated, a running gag about a movie a character can’t remember curdling fast into pure hostile confusion. The film’s centerpiece sequence, shot in a queasy long take that whips back and forth across the sand, grotesquely exaggerates the ordinary mindfuck of parents passing down the torch of parenthood. With Old , Shyamalan puts a fantastic spin on the subjective brevity of youth; in this case, it doesn’t just seem like only yesterday that the kids were just kids. But he also generously acknowledges the cognitive dissonance of growing up, too—a child’s own shock at the new “colors,” as Maddox puts it, blooming in their brain.

Visually, it’s a tour de force, even by the standards of a director who finds inventive angles on the action in nearly all his movies, from the grand ones to the silly ones to the grandly silly ones. The camera spins and lurks and looms, enhancing the seasick disorientation. This is the third film Shyamalan has made with Mike Gioulakis, who shot his Split and Glass . Is there a cinematographer today who mines more menace from composition alone? Gioulakis sometimes keeps the threat hovering just below or beyond the frame, teasing us with what’s unseen. He understands his role in guiding (and limiting) an audience’s perspective—a key tenet of Shyamalan’s work, heavy on misdirection and delayed reveals. Old ’s illusions are more analog than digital: Though the film deploys variably convincing makeup effects (and a little ghoulish CGI), it relies just as much on good casting. Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie, who play the prematurely advanced versions of the kids, have a slightly ageless quality; they convince as both teenagers and the older people they rapidly become.

In a Shyamalan movie, goofiness is always waiting at the gates, threatening to overthrow the scares. Depending on who you ask, this is a great flaw of his work or part of its idiosyncratic charm. Either way, there are times when Old ’s defenses are breached; a bit of body horror involving dislocated bones borders on absurdist slapstick, perhaps on purpose. Less forgivably, the film’s final passage is too tidy, in a plainly Hollywood manner. It lacks the more haunting fatalism of the original comic, which knew that there’s only one sensible way for this story to end. Still, the power of the conceit lingers, somehow reinforced by the impression that Shyamalan, a middle-aged man with three daughters, is exorcising his own fears, though of course they’re ours and indeed everyone else’s, too. Old doesn’t just reconfirm his talent for sending a chill down the collective spine of the moviegoing public. It also proves this wizard of multiplex craftsmanship knows a thing or two about the human condition, even as the basics of human conversation continue to elude him.

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‘Old’ Review: They Say Sun Can Age You, but This Is Ridiculous

A half-hour at the beach costs vacationers a year in this disquieting new horror puzzler, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

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By Glenn Kenny

In the opening pages of “Dino,” a 1992 biography of Dean Martin by Nick Tosches, the author cites a haunting Italian phrase: “La vecchiaia è carogna.” “Old age is carrion.”

When some vacationing families are deposited on a secluded beach recommended to them by a smarmy resort manager in “Old,” the new movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, we see a trio of vultures atop a tree take to the sky.

Not long after that, unusual things begin happening. The young children of Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, both superb, as is the entire cast) feel their bathing suits tightening. An epileptic psychologist (Nikki Amuka-Bird) unexpectedly finds herself without symptoms. The elderly mother of the trophy wife of a tetchy physician just up and dies. A moderately famous rap star (Aaron Pierre), who had come to the beach some hours before, wanders around befuddled, with an incurable nosebleed. The corpse of his female companion is discovered in the water, prompting the physician (Rufus Sewell) to accuse the rapper of murder.

In time — not too much time, because, as it happens, it is of the essence in this situation — the beachgoers figure out that they are aging at an accelerated rate. One half-hour equals about a year.

And the beach that is aging them won’t let them leave.

Some vacation. Shyamalan adapted his disquieting tale from the graphic novel “Sandcastle,” by the French writer Pierre Oscar Lévy and the Swiss illustrator Frederik Peeters. As is frequently the case with French-produced bandes dessinées, “Sandcastle” is a stark existentialist parable. (It is perhaps no coincidence that the book Krieps’s character attempts to read on the beach is a dual biography of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.) Shyamalan expands on the book in the way one would expect an American filmmaker to — among other things, eventually offering a sort-of explanation that the source material doesn’t.

Being PG-13, “Old” does not dwell, as the graphic novel does, on how rapid aging affects the children of this ensemble in the hormonal department once they hit their teens, although one pregnancy does occur during the victims’ shared life-in-a-day. Instead, the movie buckles down on the considerable anxiety and dread felt, and amplified, by the frequently bickering adults. Because time is accelerated here, wounds heal incredibly quickly. The director exploits this for a couple of weirdly harrowing knife fights and an impromptu surgery scene. The horrific potential of bones breaking, then instantly resetting themselves incorrectly, does not go unnoticed.

Shyamalan’s fluid filmmaking style, outstanding features of which are an almost ever-mobile camera and a bag of focus tricks, serves him especially well here. Sometimes the camera will pan back and forth in a ticktock pendulum fashion (get it?) and return to its starting point to reveal a terrifying change. The way he switches out his actors as their characters age is seamless. (The filmmaker’s work in the verbal department is not so felicitous. He names Pierre’s rap star “Mid-Sized Sedan”; early on one character complains to another, “You’re always thinking about the future, and it makes me feel not seen.”)

If old age is carrion, it’s also, as a “Citizen Kane” character put it, the one disease you don’t look forward to curing, which provides the impetus for the movie’s finale. While Shyamalan is often cited for his tricky endings , it’s arguable that he doesn’t quite stick the landing with this one. He adds to the story a dollop of that much-venerated Hollywood commodity, hope, and also doles out some anti-science propaganda that couldn’t be more unwelcome at this particular time in the real world.

Old Rated PG-13 for horrific imagery, language and aging. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters.

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Let’s Talk About the Twist Ending of M. Night Shyamalan’s Old

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

From the moment The Sixth Sense blew audiences’ minds with a shocking conclusion so well conceived it helped mainstream the phrase “no spoilers, please” — M. Night Shyamalan ’s name has been synonymous with the twist ending . Old , his latest film, recalls the strengths the auteur first displayed on The Sixth Sense : An advanced ability to hook viewers with a mystifying premise plus the capacity to explore big themes like mortality and regret in the space of a fright. Old also exemplifies the faults in the director’s later efforts: a penchant for problematic portrayals of mental health and rudderless camerawork in service of a surprise that doesn’t feel earned.

Old begins simply: An apparently perfect family composed of mother Prisca (Vicky Krieps), father Guy (Gael García Bernal), their 6-year old son Trent (Nolan River), and their 11-year old daughter Maddox (Alexa Swinton), travel to a paradisal island for a restive vacation. The island seems perfect: The hotel staff throws a welcome party, complimentary cocktails are offered, and the calendar is stuffed with events like parasailing, dance classes, etc. Trent even makes quick friends with a lonely local boy Idlib (Kailen Jude), who possesses valuable secrets concerning the island.

The affable resort manager tells the family of a private picturesque beach to visit. Upon arriving at the seaside oasis, however, not only do the family’s underlying pains spring to the surface, the sandy supernatural landscape seems to cause them to age rapidly. (Two years every hour, to be exact.) Trapped on the beach with two other families, surrounded by natural barriers, the imprisoned vacationers engage in a fight for survival against the elements and one another. In the horrors of Old is an imperative message: Savor life’s every minute.

If only the film’s ending lived up to that lofty mandate. Instead, the slow burn of a journey the characters take is more enlightening than the eventual twist. Along the way, we discover that Prisca, diagnosed with a benign tumor, cheated on Guy and the couple are nearing a divorce; within earshot of their children, each accuse the other of blowing up the marriage. But on the beach they do grow closer again, leaning on each other as Guy goes blind and Prisca grows deaf. By their death of old age, which they reach in a span of a day by the seaside, they barely remember what they were fighting about, deciding that it wasn’t so important in the context of their lifelong love.

A violent, schizophrenic cardiothoracic surgeon named Charles is also confined to the beach — providing a distasteful albeit common trope of a character who appears in even Shyamalan’s finest films. But Charles isn’t the most intriguing member of his family. Rather his vain, bombshell wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee) is the one to watch, the physical wear and tear of aging propelling her to a vicious mental breakdown, devolving to a kind of monstrous cave dweller. Is the horror filmmaker making a grand statement about ephemeral beauty standards? If so, then why does Chrystal become the movie’s single victim of blatant body horror, Suspiria style? (In another, more emotionally horrifying scene, a pregnant woman gives birth to a baby who, because of the time-warping nonsense of the beach, dies with a minute of being alive on the beach.)

Shyamalan undercuts many of his most fascinating plotlines in several mind-numbing missteps, namely by neatly sweeping away any lingering questions from the audience. It’s revealed that, yes, other families have died on this beach — they are why rusted silverware, clothes, and notebooks could be found buried in the sands. One found journal, replete with hand-sketched pictures, plainly explains why they’re unable to escape: The surrounding rocks are magnetized, somehow causing black-out headaches to anyone who dares to traverse them. (Between Old and F9 , magnets are becoming an essential 2021 plot device. At least with Old, there are no hints that we’re getting some larger, Shyamalan cinematic universe.)

But it’s Trent’s sneaking suspicion that the vacationers are being watched from a hillside that left me groaning into the ether. We learn that the driver who first took them to the beach — played by Shyamalan himself — has been spying on them the whole time. He works for a band of scientists who have been using the beach to try out various pharmaceutical drugs on sick, at-risk humans in an accelerated environment. (Each family, it turns out, included a member with a preexisting health condition. The test subjects’ rapid aging allowed the pharmaceutical companies to discover the “lifelong” effects of a drug in no time at all.) The families on the beach were merely guinea pigs.

The now adult Trent and Maddox, the only two survivors by the movie’s end, eventually escape from the beach thanks to a clue from Idlib, who tells them to swim through the (non-magnetized?) coral reefs. They arrive on the mainland to expose the nefarious scientist to the world, but nothing in their final scene, of Trent and Maddox helicoptering home to their aunt, is as emotionally satisfying as their time on the beach. (Why do these two adults need to be entrusted to their aunt? How, exactly, did they blow the whistle on the pharma baddies?) By inserting himself into the narrative, a common technique for Shyamalan, is the director poking fun at his reputation for caring more for puzzles than characters? I don’t think he entirely knows. He has the premise but not the experiential grounding to stick a philosophical landing.

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The Biggest Differences Between Old and the Eerie Graphic Novel That Inspired It

This post contains spoilers for Old and Sandcastle.

M. Night Shyamalan’s latest feature, Old , is inspired by the 2011 graphic novel Sandcastle . Written by award-winning French documentarian Pierre Oscar Lévy and illustrated by Swiss comic artist Frederik Peeters, the book was initially published in France, before being translated into English by Nora Mahony and released in the United States in 2013. While it received critical acclaim, twist master Shyamalan might just be its biggest fan, claiming that “ from the moment I read this, I was changed .”

It’s easy to see why Sandcastle appealed so much to the director of The Sixth Sense , as it combines psychological and supernatural horror. The comic revolves around people relaxing at a nameless beach who begin mysteriously and rapidly aging. But where Sandcastle tends to be vague and cryptic, Old gives the whole scenario a stringent setup and explanation, with many new story details filled in by Shyamalan, who wrote the screenplay himself. And of course, Shyamalan makes sure to add a signature twist . Below, we’ve broken down the biggest differences between Old and its source material.

The primary beachfront setting of both Sandcastle and Old differs between book and film. Sandcastle takes place almost entirely on the nameless beach, which is presumably set somewhere in France. (The exceptions are a few short snapshots of car rides en route to the destination.) Old expands on this setting. At the beginning of the movie, we see the main characters heading to a luxury resort with servers and caterers, fancy drinks and food, and comfortable hotel lodgings. The resort manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) recommends the beach to them, and a guide played by Shyamalan himself drives two of the families there. The climax of the movie is set at locations not seen at all in the book: a tunnel of coral and a research lab connected to the resort (more on that later).

The beaches in the novel and the movie also look different: Sandcastle ’s beach is larger, with little woodsy nooks and crannies and a grassy field that sits a ways back from the water. Old ’s beach, however, is smaller and more constricted; the characters cannot go to the hideaways that some of Sandcastle ’s beachgoers explore.

[ Read: Is M. Night Shyamalan’s Old Scary or Just Goofy? ]

The Vacationers

Many—though not all—of Sandcastle ’s characters make it from page to screen, albeit with significant changes in names, temperaments, and identifications.

Sandcastle ’s first family is the basis for Old ’s primary family. In Sandcastle , this consists of a bespectacled man named Robert; his wife, Marianne; their daughter, Zoe; their younger son, Felix; and their dog, Elvis. In Old , the family is made up of Guy (Gael García Bernal); his wife, Prisca (Vicky Krieps); their son, Trent (first portrayed by Nolan River); and their daughter, Maddox (first played by Alexa Swinton). Shyamalan expands on the family’s backstory significantly: Unlike Robert and Marianne, Guy and Prisca fight often and are on the verge of divorce, and the latter is also later revealed to be both dealing with a tumor and cheating on her husband, neither of which happens in the comic. In the book, both Felix and Zoe start at much younger ages, while at the beginning of Old Trent is 6 and Maddox is 11.

The next family introduced in Sandcastle is British. The patriarch is a racist, aggressive doctor named Charles, there with his mother-in-law; his wife, Nathalie; their daughter, Sophie; and their younger son, Louis. While the family remains British, in Old they are Charles (Rufus Sewell); his mother, Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant); his now much-younger-looking, hypocalcemic wife, Khrystal (Abbey Lee); and a daughter, Kara (first portrayed by Mikaya Fisher). He has no son in Old .

The third family, whom we meet much later in Sandcastle than we do in Old , includes an elderly science-fiction author named Henry Lascaride; his daughter, Florence; and her husband, a nurse named Oliver. Lascaride does not appear in Old , although in the movie some characters do come across the scribbled musings of a sci-fi writer. Instead, there’s Patricia—introduced early on as an epileptic, a detail important to the on-screen plot but mentioned nowhere in the novel—and her nurse husband, Jarin (Ken Leung).

In Sandcastle , the very first character to appear is an Algerian Kabyle jeweler whose name we never learn. At the beginning, he emerges from sleep in a rocky cave on the side of the beach when he sees a young woman strip off her clothes to go skinny-dipping. He voyeuristically shifts his vantage point to get another look at her, only to soon see her lifeless body float to the top of the water—all before any of the families get there. It’s then implied that he attempts to escape the beach, only to pass out in the field behind it; Robert and Marianne’s family stumble upon his unconscious body there as they walk toward the beach. He doesn’t speak to the family, but instead sneaks away to a shady enclave, where he discovers he has a nosebleed. Robert claims he “didn’t like the look of that guy,” which prompts his wife to jokingly ask if he’s racist. (This dynamic is prominent throughout the book, as he faces racist treatment by Charles as well; this is likely meant to tie into the colonial history of France’s former hold over Algeria .)

In Old , this character is significantly altered, becoming a prominent rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre), whose music one of the beachgoers is familiar with. The skinny-dipping dead woman appears in Old as well, but she’s there with Sedan, who says they were making music together before she died. Sedan also gets a nosebleed, but it’s explained as a chronic medical condition, not an effect of the beach. Though he does face suspicion and hostility, especially from the movie’s Charles, the European-colonial-Algerian component of the racism is not quite as apparent in Old as it is in Sandcastle .

One new and important character written into the story entirely by Shyamalan is the resort manager’s nephew, Idlib (Kailen Jude), who befriends Trent at the resort and passes him coded messages. These details later play into Old ’s twist.

In both Old and Sandcastle , things immediately start going wrong when the families make it to the beach: The kids and adults start rapidly aging, the skinny-dipper’s corpse is discovered, and the doctor’s mother-in-law/mother dies soon after as well. Other shared plot points, with slight differences: A sort of powerful force field keeps the beachgoers trapped in their area, although the specific effects it has on them slightly differ in the movie; two of the growing teens have a baby together, who survives until the very end of Sandcastle , where she’s seen as an adult, but who dies immediately after being born in Old ; there appears to be a man with a camera watching the families from a distant cliff (though, unlike the novel, the film later confirms exactly who he is).

One of the most significant storytelling differences between the comic and its adaptation is how long the characters survive. In the former, all the major characters hold out until they resign themselves to their fates, either aging into death or killing themselves; in the latter, however, many of the characters get gradually picked off And Then There Were None –style, with some directly murdering other beachgoers and others dying in their attempts to escape the premises. The people of Sandcastle eventually find a level of camaraderie with one another despite the tensions, but the circumstances become too much for many of the people in Old ; eventually, the movie’s only survivors are the family consisting of Guy, Prisca, Trent, and Maddox. The parents then die of old age, which leaves Trent and Maddox to crack the mystery of the beach alone.

The Experiment

In Old ’s ending, Trent and Maddox reflect on the past few days at the resort and then the beach. Trent remembers that Idlib left him some coded messages, which he translates—leading him to discover a potential escape route through a coral reef in the water. He and Maddox swim out there, though Maddox then gets one of her clothes stuck on the coral. This is documented by the man on the cliff, whom we discover is none other than Shyamalan’s character, who’s been keeping tabs on the families and reports back to the resort that though it seems Trent and Maddox almost found their way out, they likely have drowned. Shyamalan’s character then heads back to the resort, where he walks through a pharmaceutical research lab featuring scientists at work on different experiments. It turns out that the materials on the beach that cause the hyperaccelerated aging process are part of a deliberate experiment to test medicines meant to cure chronic diseases; the aging process is necessary because the pharma company’s scientists want to ensure their medicines will last a human lifetime before releasing them for general consumption. For a deeper dive into this zany ending—and the revelation of yet another new twist after the big reveal—my colleague Karen Han has written a useful breakdown .

In Sandcastle , the possibility of the rapid aging being an experiment conducted on the characters is raised, and that theory is supported by a few minor details, but it’s never spelled out fully like it is in Old , making for a much more ambiguous read. The book ends with the baby born on the beach, now grown, alone and building a sandcastle.

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Old is a 2021 American thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan . It is based on the French-language Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters . The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Gael García Bernal , Vicky Krieps , Rufus Sewell , Alex Wolff , Thomasin McKenzie , Abbey Lee , Nikki Amuka-Bird , Ken Leung , Eliza Scanlen , Aaron Pierre , Embeth Davidtz , and Emun Elliott . The plot follows a group of people who find themselves aging rapidly on a secluded beach.

Shyamalan decided to adapt Sandcastle into a film after receiving it as a Father's Day gift. The then-untitled project was announced in September 2019, with the filmmaker revealing a partnership with Universal Pictures . The following year, filming took place in the Dominican Republic for three months, during the COVID-19 pandemic , with cinematographer Michael Gioulakis .

Old premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on July 19, 2021, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 23. It has grossed $67.17 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the cinematography and concept, but criticism towards the screenplay and acting. The film's themes and twist ending received a polarized response.

4 Production
6.1 Box office
6.2 Critical response
7 References
8 External links

Married couple Guy and Prisca Cappa travel to a tropical resort with their young children Maddox and Trent as a final family vacation before they divorce. On the advice of the resort's manager, the family visits a secluded beach also occupied by three additional parties: rapper Mid-Sized Sedan and a female companion; surgeon Charles, his wife Chrystal, their young daughter Kara, and Charles's mother Agnes; and Jarin and Patricia Carmichael, a close-knit husband and wife. Tragedy strikes the group's vacation when the drowned body of Mid-Sized Sedan's companion is discovered, which is followed by Agnes suddenly dying. Strange events soon occur, including the three children becoming teenagers. The group realizes that the beach is rapidly aging them, with an entire year of growth passing approximately every 30 minutes. They also discover that at least one member of each family has an underlying medical condition and that trying to leave will result in them blacking out and waking up on the beach.

Further tragedy occurs when a bond between the maturing Kara and Trent leads to Kara rapidly giving birth, only for the baby to quickly die from the beach's effects. Amid the group struggling to escape the beach, Trent and Maddox discover the notebook of a previous traveler, along with indications of them being watched. The attempts to leave grow tenser when Charles's worsening schizophrenia causes him to kill Mid-Sized Sedan. Jarin drowns and Kara falls to her death as they look for a way off, while Patricia and Chrystal die from their respective conditions of epilepsy and hypocalcemia becoming exacerbated. Charles eventually attacks Guy at night in a schizophrenic episode, but Prisca slashes him with a rusted knife, instigating a fatal infection. As the night winds down, an elderly Guy and Prisca make amends before dying moments apart from each other.

With only the now-adult Maddox and Trent remaining by the next morning, Trent revisits a secret message given to him by the manager's nephew, which he deduces is connected to an underwater coral passage. Suspecting that the passage will allow him and Maddox to not lose consciousness while leaving the beach, he and his sister start swimming through the coral. After they fail to emerge from the water, a resort employee monitoring them reports that the entire group has died.

It is revealed that the resort is a front for a research team conducting clinical trials of new medical drugs, with guests being used as unwitting test subjects. Since the beach naturally accelerates the lives of the guests, the researchers have been able to complete the drugs' lifetime trials within a day. The researchers move forward with luring a new group to the beach but are interrupted by the arrival of Trent and Maddox, who survived their underwater swim. Using the notebook as evidence of several guests going missing, the siblings are able to bring the police to the resort. Once the researchers are arrested, Trent and Maddox head home to live with their aunt, uncertain of their future.

Gael García Bernal as Guy Cappa, an actuary married to Prisca and the father of Trent and Maddox.
Vicky Krieps as Prisca Cappa, a museum curator with a stomach tumor married to Guy and the mother of Trent and Maddox.
Rufus Sewell as Charles, a schizophrenia -battling surgeon married to Chrystal, the father of Kara, and Agnes's son.
Alex Wolff and Emun Elliott as Trent Cappa, Guy and Prisca's son and Maddox's younger brother. Wolff plays Trent at 15 and Elliot plays Trent as an adult, while Nolan River plays Trent at 6 and Luca Faustino Rodriguez plays Trent at 11.
Thomasin McKenzie and Embeth Davidtz as Maddox Cappa, Guy and Prisca's daughter and Trent's older sister. McKenzie plays Maddox at 16 and Davidtz plays Maddox as an adult, while Alexa Swinton plays Maddox at 11.
Abbey Lee as Chrystal, Charles's wife, Kara's mother, and Agnes's daughter-in-law who has hypocalcemia .
Nikki Amuka-Bird as Patricia Carmichael, an epileptic psychologist married to Jarin.
Ken Leung as Jarin Carmichael, a nurse and Patricia's husband.
Eliza Scanlen as Kara, Charles and Chrystal's daughter and Agnes's granddaughter. Scanlen portrays Kara at 15, while Kylie Begley portrays Kara at 6 and Mikaya Fisher portrays Kara at 11.
Aaron Pierre as Mid-Sized Sedan / Brendan, a rapper afflicted with hemophilia .

Additional cast members include Kathleen Chalfant as Agnes, Gustaf Hammarsten as the resort manager, Francesca Eastwood and Matthew Shear as resort employees Madrid and Sidney, Kailen Jude as the manager's nephew Idlib, and M. Night Shyamalan as the resort employee who drives the guests to the beach and monitors them.

When NME 's Beth Webb asked about the different themes tackled in Old , Shyamalan responded, "It's definitely about our relationship to time and, in my opinion, our dysfunctional relationship to time that we all have. Until we're forced to examine it, whether it's a pandemic or the factors that are on this situation for these characters, that they're trapped on this beach and they have to reflect on their relationship to time. You see some characters unable to navigate this and then some characters find peace. Why did they find peace and how did they find peace in the midst of all of this chaos? So there's this conversation about that, the one that I'm having of myself with time." [1]

At the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival , Shyamalan said that the film's focus on aging reminded him of his father, who has dementia , and his children as he watches them grow up. During the event, Alex Wolff compared the film to the COVID-19 pandemic , "Coming out of COVID it feels like time just stopped. And that's what the movie's literally about." [2] [3] At the film's premiere, Wolff was asked for his interpretation of the film and said it was "an allegorical existential sort of meditation on getting older." [4] Other cast members chimed in; Nikki Amuka-Bird said the film was about not taking nature for granted, Gael García Bernal said it was about questioning how time travels differently for other people, and Vicky Krieps found that it was about "love and family and all these things that are much stronger than any fears — the fear of aging and the fear of death." [4]

Production [ ]

Writer, director, and producer M. Night Shyamalan

In September 2019, Universal Pictures announced its plans to distribute two then-untitled independently-financed thriller films written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. In a statement, Universal Pictures President Peter Cramer said that these projects contained "highly original stories," while Shymalan added, "There are wonderful studios out there, but Universal has made it a mandate to release original films. They are the best at finding an audience for new stories with unexpected tones. I believe original films are crucial to the longevity of the theatrical experience." [5]

In May 2020, Eliza Scanlen , Thomasin McKenzie , Aaron Pierre , Alex Wolff, and Vicky Krieps entered negotiations to star. [6] That June, they all joined the cast alongside Abbey Lee , Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Ken Leung . [7] In July, it was reported that Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock, and Ashwin Rajan would produce the project through Perfect World Pictures and Blinding Edge Pictures , [8] with Gael García Bernal also being cast. [9] In August, Rufus Sewell , Embeth Davidtz , and Emun Elliott were all announced as part of the ensemble cast. [10]

On September 26, 2020, principal photography began in the Dominican Republic and to celebrate, Shyamalan revealed the film's title and published its first promotional release poster. [11] That same day, Collider reported that the film was an adaptation of Sandcastle , the French graphic novel by Swiss authors Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters , which Shyamalan had received as a collective Father's Day gift from his three daughters in 2017. [12] Old marks the first film of Shyamalan's career to have no shooting take place around his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . [13] With an $18 million budget, [14] filming took place during the COVID-19 pandemic with cinematographer Michael Gioulakis , using 35mm film , [15] and concluded on November 15, 2020. [16] After filming wrapped, Shyamalan said Old was the first film to be shot during the pandemic in the Dominican Republic and that throughout the shoot, no one tested positive for the virus as he paid for the production crew's ten-week stay at a hotel. [17]

Old was inspired by films created during the Australian New Wave , including Walkabout (1971) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), along with The Exterminating Angel (1962), Kuroneko (1968), Jaws (1975), and The Twilight Zone . [18] To create a claustrophobic feeling, Shyamalan employed several filming techniques from Akira Kurosawa 's Rashomon (1950) and Ran (1985). [19] As a result, Old was mostly filmed in a single location, the Playa El Valle beach located between two mountains on the north coast of Santa Bárbara de Samaná . Additional filming took place at Pinewood Dominican Republic Studios in Juan Dolio and in several locations around Samaná. [20] [21] To capture footage of the surrounding nature, Shyamalan's daughter, Ishana, served as the film's second unit director . [22] His other daughter, Saleka Shyamalan, wrote an original song for the film titled "Remain" that was inspired by the topic of marriage vows and U2 's " With or Without You ," used to "highlight the relationship between Guy and Prisca and the love that exists between them." [23] [24]

Several cast members recalled Shyamalan using storyboards to frame every shot in the film. [25] Ishana Shyamalan described her father's choice as a "very prescribed and programmatic" approach, while Wolff said the director "had such precision in terms of what age he wanted you to be and where he wanted you to be at that age. Night would just guide you where you needed to be emotionally, and then it would happen naturally." [22] In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter , Wolff said he and McKenzie were the first actors to be cast after submitting audition tapes, and recalled passing out during the filming of the pregnancy scene due to high temperatures. [26] During post-production, editing was completed by Brett M. Reed, [27] and the film's score was composed by Trevor Gureckis and released by Back Lot Music on July 23, 2021. [28] [29]

Release [ ]

Old was originally going to be released by Universal Pictures on February 26, 2021, [30] but in April 2020, [31] the film was removed from the studio's release schedule after its film Nobody was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [32] In June 2020, Universal Pictures announced that Old would be theatrically released on July 23, 2021. [33] A premiere for the film was held at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on July 19, 2021, which was attended by its cast and crew. [4]

On February 7, 2021, during Super Bowl LV , Universal Pictures aired a 30-second television spot for Old . [34] [35] Anthony D'Alessandro from Deadline Hollywood said the teaser reminded him of a two-part episode of The Brady Bunch , where an ancient tiki brings the group bad luck and causes Greg ( Barry Williams ) to suffer a surfing accident; [36] while, writing for Syfy Wire , Josh Weiss said the teaser "definitely bears Shyamalan's signature slow-boil tension." [37] On May 27, 2021, a theatrical release poster and an official trailer were released, which Variety 's Antonio Ferme said brought "thrills and chills," and Weiss described as "a reverse Benjamin Button situation that the characters need to reverse before they shrivel up and die." [38] [39] That July, an exclusive image of the film was released in a magazine issue of Empire . [40]

Summarizing the film's marketing results, RelishMix wrote that it was being compared to the horror films A Quiet Place Part II and The Conjuring 3 , Shyamalan's Split and Glass , and Edgar Wright 's Last Night in Soho , as well as ABC 's Lost . The site added that there were "Conversational tones swings from excitement, fear, curiosity, caution, warnings to the characters in the film — to questions about the pregnant girl and numerous guesses about how the films ends and plot twists." [41] By July 2021, the film's promotional content was viewed a total of 113.2 million times, which included 41.2 million views from three YouTube videos and 30.3 million views from nineteen videos on Facebook. According to Universal Pictures, the Super Bowl teaser was viewed at least 100 million times, but overall, videos promoting the film "[fell] short of the norm along with daily click-rates." [41] A SnapChat aging filter created for the film also gained 23 million views worldwide on its first day after it was used by celebrities such as Shaquille O'Neal , Kenny Smith , and Charles Barkley . [41]

Reception [ ]

Box office [ ].

As of August 12, 2021 [update] , Old has grossed $40.56 million in the United States and Canada, and $26.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $67.17 million. [42] [43]

A week before its release, Variety and Deadline Hollywood reported that film analytics had predicted the film would make $12–15 million in its opening weekend, with some noting that its competition, which had the same target audience, could impact box office revenues. [44] [45] Released alongside Snake Eyes and Joe Bell on July 23, 2021, in 3,355 theaters, Old made $6.9 million on its first day, including $1.5 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $16.85 million, [46] making it the sixth film of Shyamalan's to top the box office, though it marked the lowest opening weekend of his career. [41] [47] Describing the openings of Old and Snake Eyes as "weak," Michael Cieply wrote an analysis to explain the audience decline at the box office, streaming sites, and television by using Occam's razor , "Maybe, as a group, we are suffering from 'screen fatigue' — not in the narrow sense of migraines, eye strain, and Computer Vision Syndrome , but in a much bigger way, as a culture. We are tired of Zoom calls. We are tired of event television. We are really tired of looking at ourselves on media screens, large and small." [48] In its second and third weekends, the film made $6.86 million and $4.1 million, respectively. [49]

Worldwide, Old debuted in 23 markets, making $6.5 million in its first weekend; [50] the top countries were Russia ($2.1 million), the United Kingdom ($1.1 million), Mexico ($800,000), Italy ($600,000), and France ($500,000). [51] In its second weekend, the film made $7.5 million, including a $1.2 million opening in Spain, [52] and grossed $4.4 million in its third. [53]

Critical response [ ]

Rotten Tomatoes reports a 50% approval rating from 294 critics, with an average rating of 5.5/10. [54] The website's critical consensus reads, " Old has no shortage of interesting ideas -- and writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's uneven execution will intrigue or annoy viewers, with little middle ground between." [55]

Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of Old out of 100 based on mixed or average reviews critics, indicating " Error: Unrecognized metascore. Please use a number between 0 and 100. ". [56] [57] Audiences polled by CinemaScore , 52% female and 62% at or over the age of 25, gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 61% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 37% saying they would definitely recommend it. [41]

Old received criticism for its screenplay, dialogue, and acting. Wendy Ide of The Observer said the film's exposition felt "ponderous and mannered" and asked: "If we can't believe the characters, how are we meant to accept the film's central premise?" [58] WXIX-TV 's Terrence "TT" Todd gave a similar response and said that while the premise was interesting, the plot was confusing and could have been explained better as its own television series. [59] From Vox , Alissa Wilkinson wrote that "Shyamalan has not grown any more skilled at writing dialogue over the years," but found that at its best, the film was comparable to Luis Buñuel 's The Exterminating Angel . [60]

Meanwhile, the film's cinematography received praise. While criticizing the film in general, Jocelyn Novec from the Associated Press said it had "an enticing premise and pretty scenery." [61] In his Deadline Hollywood review, Pete Hammond wrote, "I don't expect this one to age very well, and some of it is just laughably bad. At the very least, as a summertime theatrical release, the stunning location should give audiences a nice respite from the heat." [62] Critic Richard Roeper described the film's main location as "absolutely breathtaking," [63] and The New Yorker 's Richard Brody wrote that "with spare methods and sharp images, the director turns a simple premise into potent fantasy." [64]

The film's themes and twist ending received a mixed response from critics. Sandcastle , the novel the film is based on, ends without explaining why the beach ages its guest, and Wilkinson found that ending to be "more satisfying." [60] From ABC News , Peter Travers said he was "shocked" to find "how clumsily [Shyamalan] handles potent themes about sudden death and the collapse of time that should resonate powerfully in the COVID-19 era. Even his argument for family values in the face of global youth worship feels rote." [65] Writing for The New York Times , Glenn Kenny said, "Shyamalan's fluid filmmaking style serves him especially well here [and] the way he switches out his actors as their characters age is seamless," but found that "while Shyamalan is often cited for his tricky endings, it's arguable that he doesn't quite stick the landing with this one." [66]

References [ ]

↑ Webb, Beth (July 26, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan explains his decisions behind 'Old' ending .
↑ Crist, Allison (June 19, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan Teases 'Old' at Tribeca: 'No One Has Ever Seen Anything Like It' .
↑ Holub, Christian (June 19, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan and Alex Wolff detail the pandemic production of Old at Tribeca Festival .
↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 White, Abbey (July 20, 2021). 'Old' Cast on Film's Ending and Making an M. Night Shyamalan Movie That Doesn't Hinge on Its Twist .
↑ McClintock, Pamela (September 16, 2019). M. Night Shyamalan Sets His Next Two Movies at Universal for Release in 2021, 2023 .
↑ Kroll, Justin (May 8, 2020). M. Night Shyamalan Sets Ensemble Cast for Next Movie (Exclusive) .
↑ Kroll, Justin (June 22, 2020). M. Night Shyamalan's Next Film Rounds Out Ensemble .
↑ Galuppo, Mia (July 21, 2020). Gael García Bernal Joins M. Night Shyamalan Thriller at Universal .
↑ Kroll, Justin (July 21, 2020). Gael García Bernal Joins M. Night Shyamalan's Next Film .
↑ Kroll, Justin (August 20, 2020). Rufus Sewell, Embeth Davidtz & Emun Elliott Round Out Cast of M. Night Shyamalan's Next Film .
↑ Beresford, Trilby (September 26, 2020). M. Night Shyamalan Reveals Title and Artwork for Upcoming Thriller .
↑ Sneider, Jeff (September 26, 2020). Exclusive: M. Night Shyamalan's 'Old' Is Inspired by Graphic Novel 'Sandcastle' .
↑ Vitarelli, Alicia (July 22, 2021). Chester County's M. Night Shyamalan talks about his new supernatural thriller 'Old' .
↑ Rubin, Rebecca (July 25, 2021). Box Office Twist: M. Night Shyamalan's 'Old' Beats 'Space Jam' and 'Snake Eyes' .
↑ Gemmill, Allie (November 14, 2020). M. Night Shyamalan's 'Old' Set Photo May Contain an Unusual Clue .
↑ Pearson, Ben (November 17, 2020). 'Old': M. Night Shyamalan Wraps Production on His Latest Thriller .
↑ Hersko, Tyler (June 18, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan on 'Complicated' Shooting of 'Old' During the Pandemic in Hurricane Season .
↑ Egan, Toussaint (August 2, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan reveals the movies and TV show that inspired Old .
↑ Ouellette, Jennifer (July 24, 2021). Review: Old is a mostly solid film undermined by jarring twist ending .
↑ Cremona, Patrick (July 23, 2021). Old location guide: where is the beach in the new M. Night Shyamalan movie? .
↑ Trivedi, Dhruv (July 23, 2021). Where Was Old Filmed? .
↑ 22.0 22.1 Tangcay, Jazz (July 24, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan's Daughter Follows in Filmmaking Footsteps as 'Old' Second Unit Director .
↑ Tangcay, Jazz (July 20, 2021). For New 'Old' Song, M. Night Shyamalan and Daughter Saleka Sought Inspiration in U2's 'With or Without You' .
↑ Rao, Mallika (July 23, 2021). The Mystery of M. Night Shyamalan .
↑ M. Night Shyamalan Talks 'Old' And Career (July 22, 2021).
↑ Davids, Brian (July 23, 2021). 'Old' and 'Pig' Star Alex Wolff on the Virtues of Nicolas Cage and M. Night Shyamalan .
↑ Tallerico, Brian (July 22, 2021). Old .
↑ Trevor Gureckis to Score M. Night Shyamalan's 'Old' (January 26, 2021).
↑ 'Old' Soundtrack Album Details (July 22, 2021).
↑ McClintock, Pamela (April 7, 2020). Universal Bumps 'Nobody' to Winter, Delays M. Night Shyamalan's Untitled Film .
↑ D'Alessandro, Anthony (December 10, 2020). Universal's Bob Odenkirk Action Thriller 'Nobody' Now Going A Week Later .
↑ Universal Sets M. Night Shyamalan's Next Movie for July 2021 (June 23, 2020).
↑ D'Alessandro, Anthony (February 2, 2021). How Many Super Bowl Spots Are Hollywood Studios & Streamers Running This Year? Not That Many .
↑ Ferme, Antonio (February 7, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan's New Film 'Old' Releases First Trailer During Super Bowl .
↑ D'Alessandro, Anthony (February 7, 2021). 'Old' Trailer: M. Night Shyamalan's Upcoming Summer Thriller Unveiled – Watch Super Bowl Ad .
↑ Weiss, Josh (February 7, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan gets 'Old' in first trailer for his next mysterious genre movie .
↑ Ferme, Antonio (May 27, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan's 'Old' Trailer Brings Thrills and Chills .
↑ Weiss, Josh (May 27, 2021). Old: M. Night Shyamalan asks 'What's my age again?' in latest chilling trailer for his new film .
↑ Travis, Ben (July 7, 2021). Old: M Night Shyamalan On Swapping Big Budgets For Creative Freedom – Exclusive Image .
↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 41.3 41.4 D'Alessandro, Anthony (July 25, 2021). Box Office Drops With 'Old', 'Snake Eyes', 'Black Widow' & 'Space Jam 2': But Is Delta Variant Or Dynamic Windows To Blame? – Update .
↑ Old . IMDb .
↑ Old (2021) . Nash Information Services, LLC.
↑ Rubin, Rebecca (July 21, 2021). Can 'Space Jam' Dunk on M. Night Shyamalan's 'Old' and 'Snake Eyes' at the Box Office? .
↑ D'Alessandro, Anthony (July 21, 2021). 'Snake Eyes' & M. Night Shyamalan's 'Old' In Cage Match At Weekend Box Office .
↑ Domestic 2021 Weekend 30 .
↑ Mendelsohn, Sam (July 25, 2021). Shyamalan's 'Old' Beats G.I. Joe's 'Snake Eyes' As The Box Office Hits A Speed Bump .
↑ Cieply, Michael (July 26, 2021). As The Audience For Almost Everything Evaporates, We Reach For Occam's Razor .
Domestic 2021 Weekend 31 .
Domestic 2021 Weekend 32 .
D'Alessandro, Anthony (August 1, 2021). Disney Pulls 'Jungle Cruise' Into Weekend Port With $91.8M In Global B.O. & Disney+ Premier Spend .
Nashawaty, Chris (August 1, 2021). 'Jungle Cruise' Sets Sail With A $34.2 Million Domestic Opening; Adds $30 Million More On Disney Plus .
D'Alessandro, Anthony (August 8, 2021). 'The Suicide Squad' Posts Best R-Rated Opening During Pandemic With $26.5M, But Worst For Franchise: Here's Why .
↑ McClintock, Pamela (July 24, 2021). Box Office: 'Old' Slithers Past 'Snake Eyes' to Top Slow Weekend With $16.5M .
↑ Tartaglione, Nancy (July 25, 2021). 'F9' Tops $600M WW, 'Black Widow' Passes $300M & China Still Confounds With Hollywood Locked In Release Date Limbo – International Box Office .
↑ Tartaglione, Nancy (August 1, 2021). 'Jungle Cruise' Sets Sail With $62M Global Theatrical, Faces Choppy Overseas Waters; 'Suicide Squad' Slays $7M In Early Debut – International Box Office .
↑ Tartaglione, Nancy (August 8, 2021). 'The Suicide Squad' Misses Mark At $72M Global; Overseas On Par With 'Birds Of Prey' As Covid Complications Continue – International Box Office .
↑ Script error: No such module "Wd". Old (in en). Fandango Media .
↑ Template:Cite Rotten Tomatoes
↑ Script error: No such module "Wd". Old . Red Ventures .
↑ Template:Cite Metacritic
↑ Ide, Wendy (August 1, 2021). Old review – M Night Shyamalan's beach thriller is all washed up .
↑ Todd, Terrence (July 23, 2021). Fox19: TT Is Not Feeling 'Old' .
↑ 60.0 60.1 Wilkinson, Alissa (July 23, 2021). M. Night Shyamalan returns with Old, a floppy but haunting thriller about aging .
↑ Novec, Jocelyn (July 22, 2021). Review: Crystal waters, soft sands, clunky dialogue in 'Old' .
↑ Hammond, Pete (July 22, 2021). 'Old' Review: M. Night Shyamalan's Latest Doesn't Age Well, But The Scenery's Nice .
↑ Roeper, Richard (July 22, 2021). 'Old': A beach speeds up aging in M. Night Shyamalan's latest letdown .
↑ Brody, Richard (July 22, 2021). " ' Old,' Reviewed: M. Night Shyamalan's New Old-School Sci-Fi Movie" . The New Yorker . Archived from the original on August 2, 2021 . Retrieved August 2, 2021 .
↑ Travers, Peter (July 23, 2021). Review: 'Old' shows director M. Night Shyamalan at his best and worst .
↑ Kenny, Glenn (July 22, 2021). 'Old' Review: They Say Sun Can Age You, but This Is Ridiculous .

External links [ ]

Official website

1 List of Paramount Home Entertainment releases

Old Movie: Ending Explained (With Plot Analysis)

Old is a 2021 thriller directed by Night Shyamalan . The film follows a group of holiday-goers who are happy to be at a private beach for the afternoon, but it appears they may never be going back home. Here’s the plot and ending of the movie Old explained; spoiler ahead.

The cast has Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Abbey Lee and Alex Wolff to name a few. It’s an interesting variation to a theme we’ve seen in other films. Do give the movie a watch before reading the article.

Hollywordle – Check out my new Hollywood Wordle game!

Where To Watch?

To find where to stream any movie or series based on your country, use This Is Barry’s Where To Watch .

Oh, and if this article doesn’t answer all of your questions, drop me a comment or an FB chat message, and I’ll get you the answer . You can find other film explanations using the search option on top of the site.

Here are links to the key aspects of the movie:

– Plot Explained
– What is it about?
– Who is the naked girl? What did Brendon do?
– Why are they ageing?
– Why do they faint if they try to leave the beach?
– Why is the girl pregnant?
– What happened to Kara? Why does she fall?
– What happened to Chrystal?
– Why coral? What did the message mean?
– Ending Explained
– Final Thoughts

Old Movie: Plot Explained

What is it about.

A group of people holidaying at a fancy resort are given an option to head to a private beach to spend their day. On reaching the beach, they find a mysterious dead body and realize that they cannot leave. Furthermore, they discover that they’re all rapidly ageing and will soon die of old age if they don’t escape.

Who is the naked girl? What did Brendon do?

Brendon, a rapper named Mid Sized Sedan and is out at the beach with his rapper girlfriend. He has Hemophilia , a condition that stops the blood from clotting, and she’s been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis , a nervous system disorder. They take the holiday to take their minds off their illness.

Brendon didn’t do anything to the girl. Her condition got accelerated by the beach and since she went out swimming, she drowned. Brendon’s non-stop nosebleeds result from accelerated ageing, causing a string of nosebleeds one after the other.

Old Movie: Why are they ageing?

The magnetism of this exact spot of the beach and the rocks submerged beneath the ocean for millions of years deposited with unique minerals are causing cells to age rapidly. This doesn’t appear to affect dead cells on people, and hence nails or hair don’t grow at the proportion they are all ageing.

However, it is weird that dead bodies rot at the same pace as cells that are alive. We’re going to have to assume that decomposition works at an accelerated pace too.

The rate at which they are ageing is – 1 hour on the beach is 2 years.

Why do they faint if they try to leave the beach?

In deep-sea diving, the water pressure increases as one descends. Any change in pressure experienced by the body needs to be slow and steady. If someone decides to surface from 30 meters below sea level too quickly, they will lose consciousness. Similarly, the people on the beach are in a place where their bodies are ageing at the rate of 2 years per hour, and if they try to go back to a regular ageing zone too quickly, they lose consciousness. It is a mystery as to how they end up back on the beach from the canyon.

Jarin, who tries to swim around the rocks, goes unconscious in the sea and drowns.

Old Movie: Why is the girl pregnant?

Kara and Trent enter puberty over their short duration on the beach. Their minds age, causing their primal instincts to come forth, and the two have sex in the tent. Kara conceives, and her pregnancy gets accelerated to childbirth in 20 minutes.

Why did the baby die?

Soon after babies are born, they need to be fed. They place the baby for a short minute on a towel; unfortunately, this is nearly 12 days for the baby without oral intake. Things move at a pace far too quickly for a newborn to survive on this beach.

Old Movie: What happened to Kara? Why does she fall?

Kara decides to climb the rocks to see if there is a way to exit the beach from above, but it appears there is a dome effect. Soon as she gets high enough, she goes unconscious and falls to her death.

Old Movie: What happened to Chrystal?

Chrystal has witnessed the deaths of her mother-in-law, granddaughter and daughter in a matter of a few hours. Looks are essential to her, and that gets stolen in a short moment which is why she can stand being seen by the others. The experience on the beach makes her mentally unstable, and hence she attacks the kids.

Chrystal has a calcium deficiency, and her rapid ageing without the right supplements makes her bones extremely fragile. The weight of the rock she picks up causes her arm to fracture. As she crawls and tosses around, the rest of her bones crack at multiple points, causing her death.

Old Movie: Why coral? What did the message mean?

Trent decodes the message from the boy in the resort, which reads, “My uncle doesn’t like the coral”. It appears that the coral has some unique properties which counter the effect of rapid ageing. We’re later shown the medical team doing research based on the coral. It seems the little boy has noticed his uncle (the hotel manager) avoid contact with the coral due to its characteristics. This gives Trent a clue that perhaps they can swim up to the corals in the sea, giving them the acclimatization effect to exit.

Old Movie: Ending Explained

The ending of the movie Old reveals that the resort is a front for an illegal medical facility that has been using chronically sick people as lab rats to fast track testing of cures for various illnesses. Each batch of people is carefully selected an brought to the resort through targeted ads. They are administered medicines through their food and drinks, sent to the beach, and monitored as they age rapidly to their deaths.

Prisca – suffered from a tumour, and if she was medicated, it didn’t work.

Guy – collateral damage, no medical condition.

Trent – collateral damage, no medical condition.

Maddox – collateral damage, no medical condition.

Chrystal – suffered from calcium deficiency, and if she was medicated, it didn’t work.

Charles – suffered from a mental disorder (psychosis), and if he was medicated, it didn’t work. He goes insane, and Prisca cuts him with a rusted knife and kills him.

Kara – collateral damage, no medical condition.

Agnes – collateral damage, no medical condition.

Jarin – collateral damage, no medical condition.

Patricia – Suffered from epilepsy; her medication worked, which is why she didn’t die as soon as she entered the beach. However, the effect of the drug wore off, and she died from her seizures.

Brendon – Suffered from a blood-clotting condition, and if he was medicated, it didn’t work.

Brendon’s Girlfriend – Suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, and if she was medicated, it didn’t work.

Trent and Maddox swim through the coral tunnel, but Maddox’s clothing gets caught, delaying their exit into the sea. In the middle of the passage, they also stop to take in some air. The impatient employee who’s been observing the beach declares the two dead prematurely and leaves. Trent and Maddox head back to the resort and approach a cop they spoke to the previous day. They hand him a diary of a member of the last group, which lists the names of the people who died with him. Cross-referencing the missing people, the cop calls it in on the resort – that’s the end for them.

Final Thoughts

I personally liked the reveal, and it was nothing over the top or purposefully left open-ended. The cast was great, and you could really feel them ageing, and their personalities didn’t change drastically. In many other films that involve a group in a bizarre situation, an ordinary group becomes murderous for no apparent reason, which didn’t happen in the movie Old.

The little boy who gave Trent the secret message was too young to have been allowed anywhere near the coral or know his uncle avoids the coral. The piece of paper hinting at the coral was a little too convenient. It would have been more believable had it been a snoopy older kid.

Shyamalan’s character appears to be a little too impatient. Given that he saw the remaining two survivors leave through the one passage that could allow them to cross over, would he not wait much longer to ensure they turned up dead? Sure, a previous incident involved someone trying to exit using the coral passage and died (because they didn’t stop for air, maybe), but this should have been a significant cause for concern to ensure Trent and Maddox were dead for sure.

That’s all I’ve got. How did you like the story and the ending of the movie Old? Leave your comments below.

Barry is a technologist who helps start-ups build successful products. His love for movies and production has led him to write his well-received film explanation and analysis articles to help everyone appreciate the films better. He’s regularly available for a chat conversation on his website and consults on storyboarding from time to time. Click to browse all his film articles

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Common sense media reviewers.

Compelling concept, so-so execution; disturbing scenes.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Not many overtly positive messages, but it does ex

Guy and Prisca try to protect their kids and calm

High body count: Characters succumb to everything

Brief shot of a woman's bare back and butt as she

Occasional "damn," "goddamn," and one use of "f--k

Adults get special cocktails when they arrive at t

Positive Messages

Not many overtly positive messages, but it does explore moral ambiguity of certain kinds of research, as well as importance of truth-telling within families and sticking together in difficult circumstances.

Positive Role Models

Guy and Prisca try to protect their kids and calm people when they can. Patricia and Jarin try to gather everyone, ask them to voice their feelings, work together. As a nurse, Jarin helps take care of everyone as they get sick and exhibit symptoms. Trent and Maddox are devoted siblings. Main cast is moderately racially/ethnically diverse, including an interracial couple (Black and Asian), a Black musician, two White families, a couple of BIPOC supporting characters. Everyone is heterosexual. Several characters have different chronic illnesses or invisible disabilities. A man seems to have early onset dementia but turns out to be schizophrenic and behaves in a way that's drawn from stereotypes about mental illness (he's homicidal).

Violence & Scariness

High body count: Characters succumb to everything from water (drowning) to one another (one person is stabbed to death, one is slashed but survives, another dies from blood poisoning). People have epileptic seizures, have emergency surgery, experience a host of other terrible things. Several dead bodies are shown; they decompose to bones and ash incredibly quickly.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief shot of a woman's bare back and butt as she undresses to swim in the nude. A woman flirts with a server. A married couple embraces and kisses. Teens hold each other; they have sex off camera and a teen girl gets pregnant.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional "damn," "goddamn," and one use of "f--king."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults get special cocktails when they arrive at the resort.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan 's Old is a thriller that explores what happens when vacationing strangers are stranded on a beautiful beach that ages them at a remarkable rate. Like all of Shyamalan's movies, there are plot twists and turns, as well as a sustained sense of peril throughout. There's a considerably high body count, with several disturbing scenes of dead bodies/characters getting sick, a surprise pregnancy and birth, emergency surgery, and the implications of children growing into young adults in a matter of hours. Various characters have chronic illnesses that manifest themselves in frightening ways. While the only sex in the movie takes place off camera, there's kissing and a scene of a woman stripping to swim in the nude (her bare back and butt are visible). Language is fairly tame except for a few uses of "damn," "goddamn," and one "f--king." Adults get special cocktails. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

Parents say (14)
Kids say (42)

Based on 14 parent reviews

Another great movie that makes us think from M. Knight Shyamalan

A wildly underrated thiller, what's the story.

M. Night Shyamalan 's creepy mystery/thriller OLD, based on the graphic novel Sandcastle , follows four groups of vacationing strangers who are visiting their resort's special private beach together for the day when they realize that something is going irrevocably wrong. A family of four -- dad Guy ( Gael García Bernal ), mom Prisca (Vicky Krieps), 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton), and 6-year-old Trent (Nolan River) -- arrives at a tropical resort in an unspecified location. The manager recommends an exclusive excursion to a private nature preserve's nearby beach. They join a wealthy multigenerational family that includes an English chief of surgery ( Rufus Sewell ), his elderly mother (Kathleen Chalfant), trophy wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee), and their 5-year-old girl, Kara. They also realize that there's a single man there, whom tween Maddox identifies as rapper Mid-Sized Sedan ( Aaron Pierre ). Soon after, young Trent discovers a dead woman in the water: the fellow resort-goer who'd gone to the beach with Mid-Sized Sedan earlier in the day. A final married couple -- nurse Jarin ( Ken Leung ) and psychologist Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) -- appear amid the chaos, and it's soon clear that the beach has unthinkable effects on everyone. They're all aging approximately two years per hour, leading the kids to quickly morph into teen versions of Maddox ( Thomasin McKenzie ), Trent ( Alex Wolff ), and Kara ( Eliza Scanlen ).

Is It Any Good?

Shyamalan's thriller has a strong cast and an initially riveting concept, but it's uneven, and most of the best parts are revealed in the trailer. The performances are serviceable -- particularly Wolff, who's become an expert at the emotional range necessary for creepy horror/psychological thrillers. McKenzie is also notably good at portraying someone who's aged too quickly and is having trouble processing all of her complicated feelings. The adults range in effectiveness, with the striking Pierre (who's excellent in The Underground Railroad ) having little to do as the confused and quiet rapper, Sewell chewing up the scenery as an arrogant surgeon, and Bernal and Krieps trying to telegraph how a marriage on the rocks would react when faced with an unthinkable crisis. Stand-outs include Leung and Amuka-Bird, who play the story's sole likable and stable couple.

As in all of his films, Shyamalan also cast himself in a notable, more-than-cameo role, and, while it was predictable, he should have given himself an even smaller part. The twists here, once the titular premise is revealed, are underwhelming (and one is as obvious as Chekhov's gun). There's no gasp-worthy Sixth Sense or The Others moment, which is fine, but the "aha!" doesn't even matter much, because audiences may no longer be invested in the outcome. The best, freakiest parts of the movie rely mostly on the kids' accelerated growth, along with the physiological abnormalities that different characters face while aging a lot in one day (not a spoiler; it's right there in the title). Old ranks somewhere in the bottom half of Shyamalan's filmography, but even so it's worth a look -- if only to see the kids fast-forward into teens.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Old . How much takes place on screen vs. off? How does that affect the way you feel about it? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How does Old compare to Shyamalan's other movies? What are some of his movies' signature elements?

In this story, how do the diverse characters work together toward a common goal? Do they succeed? What do you think about the outcome?

Who, if anyone, do you consider a role model in the movie? What character strengths are on display?

Movie Details

In theaters : July 23, 2021
On DVD or streaming : October 19, 2021
Cast : Gael Garcia Bernal , Vicky Krieps , Embeth Davidtz , Thomasin McKenzie , Alex Wolff
Director : M. Night Shyamalan
Inclusion Information : Latino actors, Female actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Thriller
Topics : Brothers and Sisters
Run time : 108 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : strong violence, disturbing images, suggestive content, partial nudity and brief strong language
Last updated : December 27, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Old review – M Night Shyamalan’s beach thriller is all washed up

Gael Garcia Bernal and Vicky Krieps are all at sea in this holiday-from-hell drama

T here’s only a certain extent to which a director can flirt ironically with the clunky storytelling of a Tales of the Unexpected episode before it stops being ironic and starts being just ponderous and mannered. And with his accelerated-ageing mystery movie Old , M Night Shyamalan is long past that point.

Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps both seem ill at ease in the roles of a husband and wife hoping for one last family holiday at an elite and secretive resort. Not surprising, since they are constantly having the kind of conversations that are more about dumping exposition than they are about shaping credible characters. And if we can’t believe the characters, how are we meant to accept the film’s central premise?

The Observer
M Night Shyamalan
Gael Garcia Bernal

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Old Reviews

Shyamalan’s efforts to stretch this into 108 minutes leaves far too many dull lapses.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Aug 10, 2023

A HORRIFYING Concept that will have you leaving the theater contemplating your life & the time you spend in it!

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Old is one of those cases of a remarkably unique, intriguing concept failing to reach its potential due to an overall disappointing execution of too many ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 25, 2023

Questionable conclusions aside, you still can’t deny the beautiful simplicity of Old’s concept or the cast’s stellar performances throughout the feature.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2023

...Old fails to live up to its potential because of its half-baked, poorly written characters

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

That pitch and pace unfortunately does the ensemble cast no favors, all of them struggling mightily to deliver some of the clunkiest dialogue of Shyamalan’s career.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2023

Though Old has a number of observable shortcomings, my overall impression of the film that sticks with me is that of excitement and amusement.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | May 2, 2023

Shymalan’s latest is compellingly perverse and wracked with a real sense of menace, making its hopeful denouement something of a betrayal.

Full Review | Mar 13, 2023

Quite beautiful and very stupid.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Oct 12, 2022

“Old” sees Shyamalan once again blending the supernatural with the real world to make something that’s uniquely his own. Not everyone will be onboard, but I was.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 17, 2022

Add Old to the unrealised potential column of M Night Shyamalan's filmography.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 8, 2022

The director’s latest reconfirms my original sentiments that M. Night Shyamalan is a one-trick pony who isn’t the most exciting filmmaker.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 10, 2022

"Old" is wildly inconsistent, preventing it from ever being genuinely as good as some of the director's better works such as "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable," or "Split."

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 20, 2022

Old's breakneck pacing once things start going south leaves little room to delve into character and personal relationships, or feature enough quieter flashes that would have helped to create sympathy for these people we've not long met.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 26, 2022

iOldi represents the sort of solid mid-range thriller that use to litter the multiplexes 25 years ago.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 13, 2022

Try as it might, Old doesnt live up to its trailer, nor does it stand tall against some of Shyamalans other films.

Full Review | Feb 26, 2022

What is clear, however, is that Old is nowhere near the project many were hoping it would be and will leave many audience members and long-time Shyamalan fans shaking their heads.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2022

Shyamalan remains more invested in setting the hook than reeling in his audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

While far from a masterpiece, Old is an entertaining thought exercise from one of Hollywoods most invigorating filmmakers.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 12, 2022

Old delivers on its buildup of tension, although it struggles to engage on a dramatic level.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 12, 2022

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Old is a 2021 American Body Horror thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan . It is based on the French-language Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, which Shyamalan decided to adapt after receiving it as a Father's Day gift from his three daughters in 2017.

A family on holiday at a tropical resort is invited by the manager of the hotel they're staying in to a secluded beach alongside a group of other people. While they plan to relax at the beach for a few hours, their plans are thrown to the wayside as they slowly realize that the beach is somehow causing them to age rapidly, condensing the whole human lifespan into a single day.

The film stars Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps , with Rufus Sewell , Ken Leung , Nikki Amuka-Bird , Abbey Lee, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff , Nolan River, Embeth Davidtz , Eliza Scanlen , Emun Elliott, Kathleen Chalfant and Thomasin McKenzie in supporting roles. It was released on July 23, 2021, with shooting occurring over three months during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Dominican Republic, making it Shyamalan's first film to be shot outside of Greater Philadelphia since his debut film, Praying with Anger .

Old provides examples of:

Trent and Maddox both have American accents. Their parents Guy and Prisca do not (they have their actors' respective accents, Mexican and Luxembourgish).
Kara's mother is American, and her father is English. When she (rapidly) ages, she has an American accent.
In the graphic novel, 5-year-old Zoe (now named Kara ) had a 3-year-old brother named Felix. In the film, Kara is an only child.
Florence (Patricia) and Oliver (Jarin) are accompanied by science fiction writer Henry Lascaride, Florence's father. No such character exists in the film, aside from a science fiction writer being mentioned as one of the beach's previous occupants .
Adaptational Modesty : The film has far less nudity than the source material - in the graphic novel, the children rapidly outgrow their clothing and spend a great deal of time in the nude. None of the children become visibly nude in the film, with their parents having luckily packed additional swimsuits for themselves that their children can now fit in; the nudity is limited to the rear ends of Chrystal and Mid-Size Sedan's skinny-dipping companion.
Louis and Sophie, the young brother and preteen sister, are now Trent and Maddox.
Zoe, the girl who experiences a rapid pregnancy and gives birth, is now Kara.
Robert is now Guy. He's married to Marianne (Chrystal) and he's Zoe (Kara) and Felix's father.
Zoe's mother, Marianne, is now Chrystal.
Prisca is Nathalie, she's Charles' wife and the grandmother (Agnes) daughter.
Florence and Oliver are now Patricia and Jarin.
Adaptation Title Change : The movie is based on the graphic novel Sandcastle .
Adorably Precocious Child : Trent and Maddox are pretty inquisitive and almost mature for their ages, which serves them well when they're the last ones left on the beach and are able to piece together clues on both what they have and deduction to escape.
Affably Evil : Very affable, as it turns out. The scientists running the experiment have a minute's silence for their victims, have memorial plaques in their office, and celebrate the extraordinary victories their experiments afford them, such as saving thousands of lives. But they've still sent hundreds, and potentially thousands, of people to their horrible deaths, including children and whole families.
Artistic License – Biology : Patricia wakes up almost immediately after her grand mal seizure at breakfast; normally one stays unconscious for some time after such a seizure. Additionally, she appears to have fully recovered by the time she and Jarin arrive at the beach. Whilst the amount of time between the seizure and their trip to the beach isn't mentioned, and Jarin says they rested at the hotel for a while, it can take a sufferer a minimum of one to two hours to fully recover from a grand mal.
The Reveal that scientists are using the beach to run clinical trials at advanced speed is this in several ways. First, the sample sizes are way too small. Second, the beach itself would skew the trials—aging years in hours causes unnatural stress replicated nowhere else, plus there might be other, less obvious effects that can't be controlled for. The data would be absolutely no help in developing medications for people in the rest of the world.
An injury with a rusted implement is definitely cause for antibiotics and a tetanus shot, but no guarantee that it will explode into full blown sepsis.
Bad Influencer : Chrystal is an online influencer married to a much older doctor, possibly just for his money, and doesn't seem to have a good word to say about anybody. However, downplayed, in that while she isn't of any use, she is shown to care genuinely for her daughter Kara and she really wasn't just being an annoying Granola Girl about her calcium deficiency.
Bickering Couple, Peaceful Couple : Jarin and Patricia are the Happily Married peaceful couple, in sharp contrast to the divorcing Guy and Prisca, who bicker constantly until they realize how severe the situation is. Charles and Chrystal are in the middle, as they have a shallow but less obviously unhappy marriage.
Bittersweet Ending : Unlike in the original comic, Trent and Maddox physically age to their 50s and the effects are irreversible, but they survive their time on the beach and manage to expose the resort to the authorities.
After Charles is infected by a rusted knife, the infection rapidly spreads through his body.
Chrystal breaks her bones numerous times, which then heal crookedly.
The poster demonstrates this, showing a woman in various states of aging, with her peeling back the skin on her leg to reveal bone.
Kara goes from being a sweet six-year-old to a teenage mother in a matter of hours, and she becomes scared when her father starts lashing out with a knife. She does a last-ditch attempt to get help by climbing the cliffs, but blacks out at a crucial time. It causes her death .
Trent forms a bond with a kid named Idlib, while Maddox tries to comfort him as their parents fight in their hotel room. He hits puberty in a matter of hours, impregnates the girl he comes to love by accident, and has a breakdown when their baby dies after a few seconds of crying. Then his parents die in front of him and his sister, and all they can do is try to find any clue that would get him and Maddox off the beach. While he says he's more worried about how his aunt will react, he reveals to the new guests that he lost his parents and Kara by manipulation .
Ironically, Idlib is the only non-aged character that suffers this. He had given Trent and Maddox a page of codes two days before, and had been surprised when Trent wanted to be friends with him. Then the rapidly aged Trent and Maddox reappear; they confirm their identities by producing the same page which is waterlogged but noticeably the same. Idlib's face screws up in pain and anguish, realizing he just lost the two new friends who were nice to him .
The hotel manager's nephew showing Trent his symbols. He says it's like a game of spies, trying to decode the message. Turns out one particular note, when decoded from those symbols, tells him and his sister that his uncle "doesn't like the coral". That secret language allowed Trent and his sister to swim through the coral reef to escape .
Guy notices (and even points out) the "beautiful coral" in the water. It is the method of escaping the beach that Trent and Maddox use in the end.
When Trent tries to pick up some items scattered along the beach (in particular a rusted butter knife), Prisca tells him to put it down and that if he got cut, he'll get an infection. This crosses into Foreshadowing when Prisca uses that same knife to kill Charles during one of the latter's schizophrenic episodes. And he does get a fast spreading sepsis infection from that cut .
Chrystal claiming to have a calcium deficiency in the restaurant initially comes across like she's just being snooty and demanding. Turns out she really does, to horrifying results.
Chekhov's Gunman : When Trent asks three guests about their occupations at the start of the film, one identifies himself as a police officer. After Trent escapes the beach with evidence of the resort's nefarious activities, he gives the evidence to the police officer, allowing for the resort staff to be arrested .
Children Are Innocent : Trent immediately befriends the shy Idlib, revealed to be the manager's nephew, and says they're friends now. When Idlib sadly says he doesn't have friends, Trent promises to facetime him and they'll go to college together. Idlib ends up saving Trent and Maddox by passing on a page of coded messages to him .
Childhood Friend Romance : Trent and Kara go from playing on the beach together as six year olds to falling in love and conceiving a child as teenagers. The beach’s rapid aging effects means this all happens in a matter of hours.
Closed Circle : The characters' attempts to leave the beach cause them to mysteriously black out and wind up back into the center of the secluded area. When Kara attempts to scale the rock, she suddenly blacks out and falls, and when Jarin attempts to swim to freedom, he drowns from blacking out in the water, a fate that apparently befell Mid-Size Sedan's companion when she went for a swim.
Composite Character : Trent seems to be a combination of Louis and Felix from the graphic novel. Also, in a way, Crystal could be a combination of both Marianne (Zoe, Kara in the movie, mother) and Nathalie (Charles' wife).
Creator Cameo : Shyamalan plays a hotel employee who drives everyone to the beach and secretly monitors them .
Cruel and Unusual Death : While most of the characters don't have particularly pleasant fates, the worst goes to Chrystal, whose bones repeatedly break and contort until she mercifully expires .
Death by Adaptation : Zoe/Kara and Louis/Trent's baby is the last surviving person on the beach at the end of the comic, though in the body of a 50 year old and will inevitably age to death as well. In the movie their child dies as soon as it's born.
Death of a Child : Kara and Trent's baby dies shortly after being born due to the beach's conditions, while Kara herself also dies.
Death Wail : Trent when he finds Kara’s body .
Didn't Think This Through : One of the scientists complains about mixing patients with mental and physical conditions, as Charles murdering one of the subjects prematurely screwed up their trial on his condition.
Do Not Go Gentle : Everyone who tries to swim out has this attitude. They reason that they're going to die anyway, but if they at least try, then they can get help rather than wait for death to come to them. Trent remembers what Idlib said about his uncle not liking the coral and realizes it has to be the only way out .
Dwindling Party - one by one the characters die from various causes (and not just aging) until only the two main characters are left.
The children gain maturity as they age, even though they hardly have time to learn those behaviors. For example, Kara shows some maturity when she tries to leave by scaling the rocks. Her main reason being that she wants to get her dad out of there because he has become too dangerous. This isn’t something a six-year-old would be thinking.
The main family at least seems to mature as rapidly as they age. While everyone else dies from panic-induced behavior, sanity slippage, or medical complications, Guy and come to realize how pointless the source of their marital issues were, not even remembering what they were in the first place (possibly because of dementia) and make peace before death. By the next day, Trent and Maddox (now in their fifties) have also made peace with their situation even though they were 6 and 11 respectively only a day ago. Even when they make their attempt to escape, they remain calm all the way to the end of the film. When all is said and done, Trent is more concerned with how his aunt feels about her niece and nephew being older than her than his ordeal.
Evil Brit : The main antagonist on the beach is Charles who has a stereotypical English name and speaks with a clipped RP English accent. However the Greater-Scope Villain is the American pharmaceutical company, and it is their trial that exacerbates Charles' schizophrenia.
Express Delivery : Kara (one of the rapidly aging children) ages into a teenager, winds up pregnant, and then swiftly delivers.
Mid-Size Sedan's companion is an attractive woman who goes skinny-dipping, which initially seems titillating. The same woman's nude body washing up the next day bloated and decomposing is significantly less so.
Thomasin McKenzie spends all of her screentime wearing only bikinis, and the first time the audience sees her is from the back . However, her character is only eleven years old mentally speaking , and the fact her body keeps on aging kills the appeal even more.
As Chrystal ages throughout the day, her skimpy bikini gradually changes from Fanservice to this.
Fauxshadow : Various lingering camera angles, and conversations imply that Maddox and Mid-Sized Sedan were going to hook up. This never happens because Sedan, real name Brendon, is killed by Charles before the mid point of the film.
When the family first arrives in the resort, a staff member comments on how young the children are. This foreshadows the resort being aware of the beach's effects.
The movie has numerous puns regarding age and time in its beginning, but they are less of a Rewatch Bonus and more on the verge of being an Overly Long Gag , especially since (unlike the manager) most of the characters who talk about aging and the passage of time aren’t aware of the beach’s effects, instead they just so happened to be talking about that at that very moment . Besides, the trailer and even the One-Word Title establish that the movie revolves around abnormal aging and passage of time.
Chrystal gives Kara advice on her posture to prevent her from becoming hunched over in the future, and constantly mentions calcium during the breakfast scene. It turns out that Chrystal has a bone condition that causes her to become hunched without calcium, which leads to her breakdown and eventual death.
Guy remarks to the van driver that they have been given a massive amount of food. They turn out to need it (or at least most of it) after all, as the kids start to increase in body mass and therefore need the extra energy.
One of the first things the family finds on the beach are various items from eyeglasses to cell phones just lying in the sand, clearly all that's left of the last poor souls who ventured here.
One of the items Trent finds in the sand is a rusted butter knife. His mother tells him to put it down, saying that he'll get a cut that will be infected. She winds up using that the same butter knife on Charles during his schizophrenic episode, and he suffers a fast-spreading sepsis infection .
Trent offhandedly comments to his mother that his shorts are starting to feel tight. That tends to happen when one is growing at an accelerated rate .
Charles grows in paranoia and becomes more erratic in movement while on the beach, lashing out with a pocketknife for seemingly no reason. This alludes to him having a mental illness, specifically schizophrenia .
When you put the pieces of the puzzle together, you realize that all the couples and families have one thing in common: they each have at least one member that suffers from an illness of some sort. It gives you the idea that the guests aren't picked out of luck but are selected for something more sinister .
Guy jokes with his kids that children are not allowed on the beach. Turns out to be true, after a fashion.
It's never explained why the beach has this rapid aging effect. Even the scientists using it can't come up with any rational explanation for it but are content to use it for their own experiments .
It’s also never explained why Sedan seems to have started aging only when the others arrived at the beach.
The blackouts while trying to leave the beach are explained as the difficulty the body has with adapting to the sudden change in aging rate. However they suffered no ill effects from entering the beach, even though intuitively one would expect a sudden speed-up in aging would be more stressful than sudden slow-down.
Healing Factor : One of the side-effects of the rapid aging is that wounds and cuts heal almost instantly, as the body's natural healing factor is rapidly sped up. Which becomes a major issue when the characters need to remove a tumor from Prisca — and when they try to counteract this by holding the flesh open, it starts healing around their fingers.
Hidden Depths : Mid-Size Sedan seems to realize they're all trapped on the beach together. He gives some insight to Maddox, a big fan of his rapping, that he came here to feel more connected to the ocean, and to nature. Maddox repeats this to herself when she ends up in her twenties.
Hollywood Old : Particularly noticeable considering that all the adults' actors stay the same (unlike the kids, who are recast as they age). As a result, Prisca tells Guy that he has noticeable wrinkles when there aren't any visible on his face, the ageing effects are of different speeds and much more variable, and it's mainly noticeable once the characters' hair goes gray that they're supposed to be elderly.
Hypochondria : Chrystal appears to have this at first, constantly yammering on about a calcium deficiency during breakfast that no one really thinks she has. Subverted - she actually does have a calcium deficiency, and it becomes a plot point.
Improbable Infant Survival : Justified with Trent and Maddox, whose younger ages allow them more time to find a way off the beach .
Insane Equals Violent : Charles has a mysterious mental illness which may be schizophrenia. Even when his condition is less severe, he quickly begins threatening Mid-Sized Sedan with a knife, and quickly escalates into trying to kill him and then everyone else on the beach.
Insurmountable Waist-High Fence : while not strictly "waist high", the manner in which the beach is surrounded by obstacles and blackouts when trying to overcome them is reminiscent of a computer game trying to force you down the intended route.
I Owe You My Life : Trent and Maddox show Idlib without words that he saved them from dying on the beach by giving his coded message to Trent the day before . Idlib realizes who they must be, and his face screws up in anguish realizing that he lost new friends just after meeting them .
Irony : Despite the rapid aging of the main characters, only three of them die of old age (Agnes, Guy and Prisca). Everyone else who died did so trying to escape, through their pre-existing condition, or was murdered.
I Want My Mommy! : When the changes start happening, Maddox and Trent hug their parents and say that they're scared.
Laser-Guided Karma : The hotel manager has subjected our main characters to have their lifetimes slowly and painfully stolen from them by the beach's Rapid Aging effect, on top of suffering their respective medical conditions at a frightening rate and dying miserable deaths. (Not to mention countless others before them who were subject to this cruel fate as well). He gets his due in the end when Trent and Maddox (two children whose bodies were primed for swimming by age ) not only show up unexpectedly at his hotel after being presumed dead, but turn in evidence of his unethical practices to the police authority.
Lighter and Softer : While no less dark than the comic, it ends on a more hopeful but bittersweet note with Trent and Maddox escaping the beach, allowing the authorities to know about the illegal experiments there. The comic ended with the deaths of all characters except the now-aged baby and no hope that things were going to change .
Male Gaze : The camera lingers on Maddox's thankfully full grown butt right before The Reveal .
Mama Bear : The group discusses if one of them could scale the cliffs and avoid the blackout effect. Trent volunteers to try since his body is big and strong enough. Prisca vetoes it; she says at that height, if he blacked out, then the fall would kill him. She forbids him from trying the cliff as his mother.
May–December Romance : Charles is noticeably a lot older than Chrystal (Rufus Sewell is twenty years older than Abbey Lee).
Meaningful Name : The Anamika Resort has a slightly sinister origin in its name, as in Hindi, Anamika means "without a name". Kinda suspicious for a reputable resort to essentially be nameless.
Miss Conception : Kara thinks she just got "a little bit fat" when she becomes pregnant. This is justified , however, since she is mentally six years old and presumably hasn't been given The Talk . Trent at least knows where babies come from (in theory), but thought that people had to do it "ten times" in order to get pregnant.
Ms. Fanservice : Chrystal spends most of the film in a skimpy bikini that reveals her posterior. Once her aging becomes pronounced and the lack of calcium starts to affect her bones, that quality is lost and she desperately tries to conceal herself.
Mundane Utility : An example that is both practical and utterly horrifying; the beach's outright supernatural aging effect is used by a facility to perform fast-forwarded drug trails.
My Greatest Failure : During their last moments together, Guy shares that he feels this way about he and Prisca's failing marriage. After everything they've been through in the span of one day alone, Guy can't help but feel their marital problems were insignificant and he should've tried harder to save their marriage.
In one of the trailers, the viewers are led to believe that the rapid aging effects of the beach will cause Charles' body to start decomposing while he's still alive. In the movie, it turns out the dark lines in his skin are from a rapidly spreading sepsis infection.

No-One Could Have Survived That : M Night Shyamalan watches the coral for just a minute and a half before assuming Trent and Maddox have drowned and leaving. Of course they haven't.
Oh, Crap! : The hotel manager when Trent and Maddox show up at the resort, alive and well, with the evidence needed to expose the resort's actions .
One-Word Title : Old.
Only Sane Woman : Patricia tries to be this. When everyone realizes that they can't leave the beach, she tries to calm them down when Charles starts accusing Mid-Size Sedan of drowning his girlfriend, saying that there has to be a logical explanation. Unfortunately, psychologists' training didn't have a scenario for Rapid Aging .
Due to Kara dying from her cliff fall, both Charles and Chrystal end up outliving her - although neither particularly notices because of their medical conditions worsening .
Ironically, Kara outlives her own offspring, as her baby dies shortly after birth .
Pet the Dog : Charles and Chrystal dote on Kara for all their shallowness. When Kara starts to grow rapidly, Chrystal gets her changed into a spare swimsuit and comforts her through the delivery of her baby.
Precision F-Strike : Guy calls himself a "fucking coward" when telling Prisca he should have done more to save their marriage.
Predatory Big Pharma : The beach is revealed to be run by an American pharmaceutical company, who are using it in an experiment to figure out how to reverse ageing. The specific scientists are shown to be extremely affable , but the scheme has conspired in the deaths of many people.
Rapid Aging : The whole plot of the film revolves around the beach causing everyone to age one year for every half hour they spend there. A 6-year-old Kara finds herself aging into a teenager in a matter of hours, Trent has his voice deepen over the course of a conversation, wrinkles suddenly sprout on Guy's face, and the body of a woman who seemingly just died has quickly decomposed into a skeleton (it's stated that it would take the body about seven years to do so naturally).
Reasonable Authority Figure : The police officer. When Trent flags him down at the hotel and presents him with the notebook, he leaps into action right away, confirming that the names in the notebook all belong to missing persons and aiding in the investigation into the drug company. He also escorts Trent and Maddox home, showing that he believes that they are who they say they are.
Remembered Too Late : Zig-zagged. The hotel manager’s nephew gives Trent an encoded message the morning everyone goes to the beach, but Trent only remembers it the following morning, when only he and Maddox are still alive (and in their fifties). It helps them to escape, however, once Trent decodes it.
Roadside Surgery : Surgeon Charles uses this to excise Prisca's rapidly growing tumor.
Rule of Symbolism : The ticking sound in the trailer brings to mind a clock, referencing the passage of time and the rapid aging.
Running Gag : A rather tragic one, but Charles' mental issues tend to manifest as him suddenly asking if anyone remembers the name of a movie that starred Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando . (It's The Missouri Breaks if you're curious).
Chrystal also suffers from this, though not as severely as her husband. Her panic begins very early and only gets worse when she starts to visibly age, after which she frantically tries to cover herself and ultimately flees to a cave. Matters are made worse by the pain her condition brings on, and by the time Trent and Maddox find her in the cave, she is an utter wreck, saying how it hurts to move her body and screaming for them not to look at her.
Skewed Priorities : Trent and Maddox recognize their increasingly dire predicament of having seemingly no way to escape the beach, aging quickly all the while. They decide to keep trying... but pause to build a sandcastle.
Something Only They Would Say : At first, Guy and Prisca don't recognize their kids. Then Trent and Maddox hug them, and say they're scared. Prisca's expression goes to Oh, Crap! when she realizes Trent nearly reaches her height.
Small Role, Big Impact : Trent and Maddox find a notebook that was left behind by one of the beach's previous inhabitants, an aspiring science fiction author. The man is no longer living, and the audience does not even learn his name, but because he was trying to make sense of what was happening and had the good sense to write down the names and addresses of the people in his group, Trent and Maddox are able to present proof to the police and the drug company gets taken down.
Sociopath : A moment of silence is a very hollow gesture for a group of people who are willing to send 10 people to an excruciating and horrifying death. Particularly since they were only actually studying three of them. In other words they sent seven people to be collateral damage in a dubious experiment at best. Special mention goes to the van driver played by M Night Shyamalan who doesn’t even seem slightly fazed that he’s sending three children to a horrific death and casually watches from a cliff.
Spanner in the Works : Trent and Maddox are able to leave the beach alive (if greatly aged) because the hotel manager's nephew gave them a clue about how swimming through the underwater coral passage would allow them to escape without blacking out. If it hadn't been for him, both kids would've eventually died of old age like the rest of the characters, and the Hotel Manager would've gone on carrying out his experiments on more unsuspecting guests.
Spared by the Adaptation : In the original graphic novel, no one on the beach survives the unexplained Rapid Aging . In the film, siblings Trent and Maddox manage to escape.

Statuesque Stunner : Chrystal, who's taller than even most of the male members of the group.
Surprise Pregnancy : Kara ages into a teenager and winds up pregnant.
A middle-aged Jarin attempts to swim around a distant rock formation against a strong current to get off the beach. His body washes ashore, and the group discerns that he must have blacked out while swimming due to the beach's strange energetic barrier.
As they age, Guy's vision blurs and Prisca goes deaf in one ear. Because of their diminished senses, neither of them notices Charles with the knife until it's too late.
Sympathy for the Devil : Calling Charles a "devil" is a bit of a stretch, but Prisca sympathizes with him despite having to kill him to protect Guy, knowing that he was as much a victim as the rest of them.
This Is Gonna Suck : In the midst of everyone preparing for hers and Trent's baby's birth, Kara has this attitude when she suspects birthing a child isn't going to be a simple or painless procedure. And it doesn't make it any less heartbreaking that she expresses this revelation in the only way a mental six-year-old can: Kara: I'm scared! I'm scared!
Tick Tock Terror : The music for the trailer features the unnerving sound of a ticking clock that starts up once the protagonists realize that they are rapidly aging .
Token Good Teammate : Due to being a child, Idlib doesn't understand that his uncle's resort is not supposed to be nice and there's a reason he's not allowed to befriend the guests. His brief friendship with Trent allows him and Maddox to escape when he passes on a page of codes .
The Topic of Cancer : Prisca reveals to Maddox that when she found out about the tumor, and it was benign she freaked out and started an affair. It turns out that Guy was deciding whether or not they should divorce, and the trip was their last hurrah .
Tragic Stillbirth : Downplayed. Charles has untreated schizophrenia, and he fears that getting any treatment will out him and discredit his career as a cardiac surgeon and chief of medicine. Then his daughter rapidly gets pregnant and gives birth child, who dies seconds after birth, while Chrystal is screaming for him to help .
Trailers Always Spoil : The various trailers/advertisements gave away the deaths of Charles, Kara, Patricia, and Jarin. Breaking down the trailers would also reveal footage of Trent and Maddox as adults .
Trauma Conga Line : Just about everyone goes through this during their time on the beach , but special mention goes to Kara. Her grandmother suddenly died, she grew into a teenager, involuntarily had sex with Trent, went through a rapid pregnancy and childbirth, had to watch their child pass away moments later , witnesses her father start to go through a mental decline , and ultimately dies when she tries to escape by scaling the rocks. And this all happened within a matter of hours. That is way too much for a (mentally) six-year-old to go through .
However, Maddox and Trent discover a notebook left over by a science fiction writer who was previously on the beach, and he theorised that the rocks facing the beach were submerged beneath the ocean for millions of years, almost at the point of reaching the magnetism of Earth, carrying strange minerals that cause cells to age at an abnormally rapid pace.
Well-Intentioned Extremist : The group that runs the resort the characters visit is actually a team of scientists who lure people with medical conditions to the beach knowing they will die and secretly give them experimental medicines for said conditions to speed up the testing progress, reducing clinical trial time to a mere day thanks to the beach's rapid aging effects and allowing them to produce these medicines faster for those who need them. They recognize that the reality of the situation is harsh, but believe that it will ultimately save millions of lives.
Within Arm's Reach : When being attacked by the violent Charles, Guy reaches out and grabs a handful of sand, which he then throws in Charles's face. It temporarily blinds him, allowing him to get the upper hand.
What Happened to the Mouse? : After Jarin's death by drowning , Patricia wraps herself in pool noodles and prepares to swim for it, only to drop dead from her seizure condition. The pool noodles, a very real solution to the problem of passing out in the water, are never mentioned before or again, though it stands to reason the current would just wash the unconscious person back onto the beach.
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The last three years have aged all of us rapidly, which makes M. Night Shyamalan ‘s 2021 sci-fi thriller, Old —aka the movie about the beach that makes you old—particularly relatable.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch the movie in theaters last year, the good news is that Old is streaming on HBO Max now, free to anyone with a subscription. And sure, the Twitter memes were very funny, but this twisted sci-fi horror story was a genuinely riveting watch. The concept alone, which is based on the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, is enough to hook you in. And Shyamalan expertly builds on that concept, finding new and visually stunning ways to disturb his audience while staying true to the story.

It’s compelling, fascinating, and maybe a little bit silly, but, as a bonus, it comes with a satisfying ending that actually makes sense—if you’re paying attention. But if you weren’t, don’t worry, because Decider is here to help. Read on for the Old plot summary and the Old ending explained.

WHAT IS THE M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN MOVIE OLD ABOUT? OLD PLOT SUMMARY:

The premise of Old is simple: A group of families on a resort vacation are escorted to a private beach and find themselves trapped there—and aging rapidly. (AKA, the beach that makes you old.)

The protagonists are Guy and Prisca Cappa (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps), who hope that this family vacation will soften the blow to their two young children, Maddox and Trent, that they are getting a divorce. When they arrive at the hotel, Guy and Prisca are greeted with complimentary drinks, which they gladly take. Maddox and Trent make friends with Idlib, the nephew of the resort manager. Trent and Idlib make up a coded language together, and use it to pass secret messages to each other. (Remember this for later!)

A resort guide convinces the family to come on an excursion to a special private beach. They are joined by three other parties: a surgeon named Charles (Rufus Sewell), his vain wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee), their young daughter Kara, and Charles’ mother Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant); husband and wife Jarin and Patricia Carmichael (Ken Leung and Nikki Amuka-Bird), and a rapper who goes by the name Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre). The guests are a little confused about why the guide packs an obscene amount of food for their beach day trip, but let it slide.

After discovering a washed-up dead body, it becomes clear that no one can leave the beach. If they try to go back the way they came, they get a black-out-inducing pressure head and are forced to turn back. Then, suddenly, the children are no longer children, but teenagers. As everyone ages rapidly, it becomes clear that most of the adults have underlying medical issues. Prisca quickly grows a huge stomach tumor, which Charles removes. Charles’s behavior is increasingly erratic and paranoid, and it’s revealed he is schizophrenic. Patricia dies from an epileptic seizure and Chrystal—in a horrifying death scene—dies from her bones rupturing from hypocalcemia.

Eventually, the only people left alive are Maddox and Trent, who are now middle-aged (now played by Embeth Davidtz and Emun Elliot).

WHAT IS THE OLD ENDING EXPLAINED?

Trent realizes he still has a message from Idlib that he never decoded. When he decodes it, it says “My uncle doesn’t like the coral.”

Trent and Maddox swim toward the coral and discover an underwater tunnel, and swim through it. We then cut to the scientist (played by Shyamalan himself) who has been observing the people on the beach this entire time. When Trent and Maddox don’t resurface, the scientist calls his superior to report that they both drowned. He assures them there is no way they made it through the coral, and that “trial 73” is complete.

He packs up his recording equipment and returns to a lab. We see monitors tracking things like heart disease, epilepsy, tuberculosis, and more. Then we see scientists injecting drugs into those cocktail glasses given to Guy and Prisca at the beginning of the movie.

The hotel manager gives a speech to the scientists about how many lives they have saved, being able to test new medicines on patients quickly by sending them to the beach, and reducing the time for human trials from decades to a mere couple of days. This trial was a success, because Patricia’s medicine prevented her from having a seizure for 8 hours, aka 16 years in beach time. It is revealed that the scientists don’t know why this beach exists, just that this pharmaceutical company happened upon it, and have been luring people with chronic conditions there for unethical medical trials ever since.

Back the hotel, a sopping wet Trent Cappa approaches a man who he met as a little kid, who he remembers is a police officer. He hands him evidence from the beach—a notebook he found from a previous subject, who described everything that had happened, and the people he was with. The cop calls his station and reads him names from the notebook, who were all reported missing.

Trent and Maddox Cappa loudly announce what happened to them in the hotel lobby. We then flashback to the moment when Trent and Maddox were caught in the underwater tunnel, and see they were able to briefly resurface for air, and then swim the rest of the way out, after the scientist had left his observation post. Trent and Maddox are flown to the airport on a helicopter, where they will meet with their aunt, and live out the rest of their lives having skipped four decades of their life. It’s not exactly a happy ending, but at least now they can prevent anyone else from going to the beach that makes you old.

It’s never explained why the beach makes you old—just that it does. It’s a freak of nature. Just accept it!

Ending Explained

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Tell me if this sounds familiar: A romantic couple, one American, one British, one the proprietor of a small, very narrow business, happy with family and friends but lonely and a little lost, one a global superstar, but lonely and a little lost. Both are spectacularly beautiful. And there’s a reason the star has to visit the ordinary person’s home, where a disgusting beverage is offered, plus a gift of a painting that carries a lot of meaning and constant predatory paparazzi.

Yes, you will recognize a lot of the elements of “ Notting Hill ” in “The Idea of You.” It is a glossier but lesser work from writers Michael Showalter (who also directed) and Jennifer Westfeldt , whose better films have more texture. Here, they work from a beloved novel by Robinne Lee . The book's Amazon blurb reads, “included on The Skimm's 2020 list of Eight Books Both You and Mom Will Love.” Perhaps they erred on the side of fan service, hoping that their stars would fill in what the script was missing. They’re partially right. Anne Hathaway , playing the “older woman” of 40, is still as dewy as she was as an ingenue, and rocketing-to-stardom Nicholas Galitzine is a swoon-worthy Prince Charming. They do their considerable best, even when the screenplay limits them to longing glances, steamy embraces, and heart-breaking partings.

Hathaway plays Solène Marchand, owner of a small art gallery in the trendy Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles and a divorced mother of Izzy ( Ella Rubin ), a high school junior. Solène's ex-husband, Daniel ( Reid Scott ), who is better at spending money on Izzy than spending time with her, has purchased VIP access passes for Coachella so that Izzy can have a meet-and-greet with August Moon, a boy band she has not loved since 7 th grade. At the last minute, Daniel bails on the festival for a business trip, and Solène has to abandon her plans for a solo camping trip to take Izzy and her friends to the concert.

That is where Solène somehow mistakes a singer’s trailer for a port-a-potty, this story’s attempt at a meet-cute. The singer is poor little rich boy Hayes Campbell (Galitzine), who has been a pop sensation since he auditioned to be a part of a boy band when he was 14. He is drawn by Solène’s combination of normality (not recognizing him) and stunning beauty (I mean, it is Anne Hathaway). He tracks her down at her art gallery, buys everything in it, and, because he is constantly hounded by press and fans, they go to her home for lunch, where they share some stories about their trust issues (and then a kiss).

So far, so good. But this is where it goes from a barely plausible fairy tale to a big, juicy target for one of those YouTube snark-fests about plot holes and character implausibility. Despite being alive in 2024 and Hayes’ experience for nearly half his life with constant attention from fans and media, they somehow think Solène can go on tour with the band through Europe and smooch in public with no one noticing. While they did inch his age up four years from the novel’s 20, somewhat diminishing the oooky factor, they don't give Hayes much of a personality other than that of lost, sensitive guy whose immediate, unwavering devotion speaks only of his perfect boyfriend-ness. Never of, oh, I don’t know, undifferentiated neediness; his feeling of abandonment by his mother; any thought he might have about someday wanting children; any issues of generational disconnect; cultural, developmental, or life experience.

Solène’s character is just as thinly developed (still hurt by her ex, adoring her daughter – though very cute when they sing along to St. Vincent in the car), enriched by her support for local artists, and, later, understandably unsure about whether a relationship with a pop star seven years older than her daughter is a good idea. But Hayes has even less to work with. His only traits are being in love with Solène and maybe wanting to write some songs. It's worth mentioning that the songs in the film, both original and needle drops, are quite good.

If they gave Oscars for bringing underwritten characters to life, Hathaway and Galitzine would be contenders. Though many in the audience may find more satisfaction from the sweet revenge on her cheating ex than the romance, as implausible as it is, we cannot help rooting for Solène and Hayes to find a way to make it work.

On Prime Video now.

Nell Minow is the Contributing Editor at RogerEbert.com.

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COMMENTS

Old (film)
Old is a 2021 American body horror thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan.It is based on the French-language Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Lévy [] and Frederik Peeters.The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza ...
Old movie review & film summary (2021)
Rod Serling would have loved it. And "Old" is very effective when Shyamalan is being playful and quick with his high concept. "Old" doesn't really feel like a traditional mystery. I never once cared about "figuring out" what was happening to this crew, enjoying "Old" far more as surreal horror than as a thriller that demanded ...
Old review
Old is an enthrallingly bizarre piece of old-fashioned entertainment: adapted by Shyamalan from the graphic novel Sandcastle, by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters; it is exactly suited to ...
Old
Old has no shortage of interesting ideas -- and writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's uneven execution will intrigue or annoy viewers, with little middle ground between. Love him or hate him, no ...
M. Night Shyamalan's 'Old': Film Review
Director-screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan. Rated PG-13, 1 hour 48 minutes. Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps play Guy and Prisca, parents who want to take their kids Trent and Maddox (Nolan ...
"Old," Reviewed: M. Night Shyamalan's New Old-School Sci-Fi Movie
Richard Brody reviews the new film "Old," written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, and others.
'Old' Movie Review: M. Night Shyamalan's New Horror Film
movie review 10:45 a.m. In Search of a More Welcoming Reality Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow is an enveloping, confounding film about isolation, gender transition, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Old Review
Old Review. Old hits theaters on July 23. M. Night Shyamalan's Old, which tackles the distinct horrors of aging, ends up being a fascinating entry to the director's spotty career. It may not be ...
Old brings out the best and worst in M Night Shyamalan
Old feels like a repeat of Shyamalan's 2004 film The Village - it's provocative and inventive right until the point the director retreats into narrative neatness and conventional emotions.
Old review: M. Night Shyamalan returns with a creepy thriller
In its most intense moments, Old is one of M. Night Shyamalan's most genuinely disturbing visions: a horror movie about that most universal of horrors, inescapable mortality.
Old (film)
Old is a 2021 American supernatural horror film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan. It is based on the French-language Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters. The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen ...
Old (2021)
Synopsis. The Kapa family - parents Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and their kids eight-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and six-year-old Trent (Nolan River) - arrive at a fancy resort for a family vacation. After settling into their rooms, Trent befriends a young boy named Idlib (Kailen Jude), and they do activities like ask ...
'Old' Review: They Say Sun Can Age You, but This Is Ridiculous
July 22, 2021. Old. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Drama, Mystery, Thriller. PG-13. 1h 48m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn ...
'Old' Movie Ending: M. Night Shyamalan's Twist, Explained
Old, his latest film, recalls the strengths the auteur first displayed on The Sixth Sense: An advanced ability to hook viewers with a mystifying premise plus the capacity to ... book review 8:00 a.m.
Old movie vs book: M. Night Shyamalan changes the twist ending
Sandcastle 's first family is the basis for Old 's primary family. In Sandcastle, this consists of a bespectacled man named Robert; his wife, Marianne; their daughter, Zoe; their younger son ...
Old (film)
Old is a 2021 American thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan. It is based on the French-language Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters. The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, Aaron ...
Old Movie: Ending Explained (With Plot Analysis)
Old is a 2021 thriller directed by Night Shyamalan. The film follows a group of holiday-goers who are happy to be at a private beach for the afternoon, but it appears they may never be going back home. Here's the plot and ending of the movie Old explained; spoiler ahead. The cast has Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Abbey Lee ...
Old Movie Review
Old. By Sandie Angulo Chen, Common Sense Media Reviewer. age 14+. Compelling concept, so-so execution; disturbing scenes. Movie PG-13 2021 108 minutes. Rate movie.
Old review
And with his accelerated-ageing mystery movie Old, M Night Shyamalan is long past that point. Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps both seem ill at ease in the roles of a husband and wife hoping ...
Old
Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 26, 2022. iOldi represents the sort of solid mid-range thriller that use to litter the multiplexes 25 years ago. Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 13 ...
Old (Film)
Old is a 2021 American Body Horror thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan.It is based on the French-language Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, which Shyamalan decided to adapt after receiving it as a Father's Day gift from his three daughters in 2017.. A family on holiday at a tropical resort is invited by the manager of the ...
'Old' Ending Explained: M. Night Shyamalan's Thriller ...
The last three years have aged all of us rapidly, which makes M. Night Shyamalan's 2021 sci-fi thriller, Old—aka the movie about the beach that makes you old—particularly relatable.. If you ...
Official Discussion
Director: M. Night Shyamalan. Writers: M. Night Shyamalan (written for the screen by), Pierre-Oscar Lévy (based on the graphic novel "Sandcastle" by), Frederick Peeters (based on the graphic novel "Sandcastle" by) Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal as Guy. Vicky Krieps as Prisca.
The Idea of You movie review & film summary (2024)
Hathaway plays Solène Marchand, owner of a small art gallery in the trendy Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles and a divorced mother of Izzy (), a high school junior.Solène's ex-husband, Daniel (), who is better at spending money on Izzy than spending time with her, has purchased VIP access passes for Coachella so that Izzy can have a meet-and-greet with August Moon, a boy band she has ...
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
Sonic the Hedgehog 3: Directed by Jeff Fowler. With Ben Schwartz, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, Idris Elba, Keanu Reeves. Plot under wraps
John Mulaney's 'Everybody's in L.A.' Is Totally Weird and Wonderful
Mulaney has, famously, had a rough few years. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he entered rehab for drug and alcohol addiction; a few months later, he announced his separation from his wife ...

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Old Movie: Ending Explained (With Plot Analysis)

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