M. Night Shyamalan is an interesting director to review. Many times, when you speak of a well-known director, it is because his or her specific style is quite emblematic in their movies. And this can be the case for directors who are known for putting out good movies and bad ones. Shyamalan, however, is famous for both, so the only thing you can expect from his movies is indeed, his style. The rest is like playing Russian Roulette, you might get lucky, or not, depending on your particular taste of course.
With his most recent release, Old, I’d say that I caught a particularly nasty bullet, that at first didn’t seem like it was going to be one. What I mean by this is that, much like some of Shyamalan’s previous movies, the premise behind Old is quite intriguing, and it entices the viewer to stay engaged from beginning to end, but the execution is quite shaky, the themes are incomplete in their exploration and certain dramatic moments which are meant to be serious come off as straight up hilarious and laughable, making for a very jarring viewing experience.
So, the movie is about a family, with parents Guy and Prisca, and two children, 6 year old Trent and 11 year old Maddox. They all go to a resort on a tropical island and are advised by the hotel’s manager to go to a secluded desert beach that is supposed to be stunningly beautiful. The family goes to the beach, driven there by the hotel’s shuttle driver (played by Shyamalan himself), along with another family, and an additional couple. Upon arriving at the beach, they notice another mysterious man is already there and as time goes on, they start to realize that time advances at rampant speeds on this beach and they are quickly aging. On top of that, they cannot leave the beach as the rocks around it seem to form some kind of magnetic field that causes them to faint whenever they try to walk out of the beach.
The idea of the movie seems to be for the characters, and by extension, the audience, to confront their own mortality and frailty within the confines of a sped-up timeframe, which is indeed interesting. In fact, giving the movie some credit, there are moments where Shyamalan does touch on thought-provoking aspects of accelerated aging, such as the rapid development of a child’s mind and how they are starting to think in a different way very quickly. Another interesting idea is how minor problems that affect humans quickly dissipate when years pass by in a matter of hours. Guy and Prisca, whose marriage is on the brink of collapse are able to reconcile pretty drastic divergences between them within the span of a single day, because within that context, everything becomes meaningless.
And the final twist with the hotel’s management machinating everything through the revelation that they are actually a pharmaceutical company giving tourists with chronical illnesses prototype drugs, and then sending to the beach to test the effects in an accelerated environments is quite original. Despite being ludicrous from a realistic standpoint, it was totally not what I expected and within the confines of the movie’s world it kind of fits.
But that’s just it. Some ideas of the movie work, which are tied with its premise, the thing that Shyamalan probably thought of first when deciding to make the movie (which is admittedly, based on a book). Everything else though, every element tied to the actual movie making process and execution falls flat. Chief among these failing aspects are the writing and the camerawork.
Touching on the latter first, I have rarely seen so many filming approaches in the same movie. In here you’ll find dramatic circular shots, pans from character to character along a line, shaky cam, extreme close-ups among others. And it wouldn’t necessary be a problem if these techniques were not employed to overly reinforce the tension of the scenes and the drama happening between the characters, but that’s exactly what occurs.
However, doing so is like flashing a sign in front of the audience telling them what to feel in a particular moment, rather than letting the scene, the lines and the actors do that instead. This breaks immersion so completely that I hardly was able to take any dramatic scenes seriously, especially once the characters are on the beach. I would much rather just see plain vanilla shots of the actors interacting because at least the actors are taking these scenes seriously and at points they succeed even when everything else in the movie is working against their efforts.
Addressing the writing second, this aspect is the most central to the movie’s shortcomings and one that I want to spend some time on and get into some spoilers. Old deals with its premise in just about every predictable way you could imagine but mixed in with the interesting elements I mentioned earlier, it could have been an entertaining, yet thoughtful movie.
However, at a point during the middle section of the movie, it seems as if Shyamalan stopped taking his own film seriously, and added scenes just for shock value and to generate exciting moments, without any room for breathing and develop the characters and themes. And for a good while during this part, that’s the movie.
First, the couple of kids from the two families grow into teenagers and unknowingly conceive a baby, which is born in 30 seconds and immediately dies (I laughed during this part). Then someone tries to climb the rocks around the beach only to faint, fall, and die. Then, someone thinks of swimming out of the beach and going around the rocks and dies as well. Then someone is stabbed, then a character just disappears for a good while and comes back as a kind of crazed deformed monster to chase the two central kids in a cave.
It’s just plot development, followed by plot development, like we’re in a survival horror movie, rather than an intellectual thriller. There are some interesting exceptions, like the character who suffers from schizophrenia who slowly grows more unstable, only to become a genuine threat to the rest of the group, which is actually built up from the very beginning, therefore being earned and effective, but these moments are few and far between.
In the end, this empty progression of the story only stops when only the main family remains, and then we have genuine heartfelt moments that actually do strike chords with the audience, but at that point for me it’s too little, too late. After the emotional climax, there is still the matter of finding a way out of the beach, so the rest of the movie falls into a hastily done manner through which the surviving characters leave, and reveal everything about what the hotel has been doing.
One other thing I have to mention is that this film has also really choppy editing. Scenes flow very awkwardly between each other, cuts happen really early at certain times to the point where I thought I actually missed a scene, like something was very much supposed to be there and wasn’t, which was another thing that really broke my immersion.
Finally, and this is probably just a personal gripe, but I don’t really like how Shyamalan inserts himself into his movies. They’re not really cameos because, at least in Old, he has full scenes with the characters, despite being a very minor presence, but you’re not seeing an element of the movie, you’re just seeing the director, which also pulls me out of the experience.
It’s okay for directors to place themselves in movies, like Peter Jackson in Lord of the Rings, which is a tiny cameo, or on the other end of the scale Quentin Tarantino playing fully present characters in many of his movies. But I find Shyamalan to be really awkward on screen, not at all natural, like he just wandered in front of the camera and wasn’t meant to, so it definitely was not a cool moment when he showed up here.
Ultimately, I have to commend Shyamalan and Old as a movie for one thing: it is definitely entertaining and not at all boring. Actually, I don’t find Shyamalan to be a boring director or writer, which is definitely praise-worthy. He finds interesting ideas to explore in many of his films and this one is no exception. However, Old is littered with flaws and I would not suggest it to anyone based on its merits as a serious movie. Shyamalan does not employ competent cinematic techniques in a way that complements the subject matter and both his writing and his dialogue detract from the points he is trying to make with this movie. On the other hand, if you’re looking for an enticing, weird, at times interesting, and very, very silly experience, you can give it a watch.