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A family heads to a secluded beach vacation. They speak vaguely of the passage of time in a way that parents often do with their children, as mom mentions how she can’t wait to hear her daughter’s singing voice when she grows up. Shortly thereafter, it’s revealed that mom may not be able to do that because she has a tumor and this could be a "last trip," either because of her physical health or the health of her crumbling marriage. The passage of time changes at different points in your life, but especially when you see your kids growing up too fast and when you worry you might not be able to witness the bulk of their journey. When M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old,” based on the book by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters, is playing thematically with those feelings and allowing itself to be surreal and scary in the process, it truly works. When it feels like it has to nail down specifics, such as in a disappointing final stretch, it crosses that median line into the silly lane. The mysteries of aging are something everyone considers—“Old” taps into those considerations with just enough style to engage before stepping back from its own edge.

The family in the opening scene consists of Guy ( Gael García Bernal ), Prisca ( Vicky Krieps ), Trent ( Nolan River ) and Maddox ( Alexa Swinton ). The resort manager tells them about a secluded beach where they can avoid the touristy crowds, and they’re taken there by none other than Shyamalan himself in maybe his most meta cameo (after all, he’s the director, assembling all of his players on the sandy stage). Guy and Prisca’s clan isn’t alone. They’re joined by a doctor named Charles ( Rufus Sewell ), his wife Chrystal ( Abbey Lee ), his mother Agnes ( Kathleen Chalfant ) and his daughter Kara ( Mikaya Fisher ). A third couple joins them in Jarin ( Ken Leung ) and Patricia ( Nikki Amuka-Bird ). All of the travelers meet a mysterious traveler at the beach when they arrive in a rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan ( Aaron Pierre ). And why is he bleeding from his nose? And is that a dead body?

From their arrival, the beauty of this beach, surrounded by steep stone, feels threatening. The waves crash and the rock wall almost seems to grow taller as the day goes on. When they try to walk back the way they came, they get faint and wake up on the beach again. And then things get really weird when Trent and Maddox are suddenly significantly older, jumping about five years in a couple hours. The adults figure out that every half-hour on this beach is like a year off of it. As the kids age into Alex Wolff , Eliza Scanlen , and the great Thomasin McKenzie , the adults face their own physical issues, including hearing/vision problems, dementia, and that damn tumor in Prisca’s body. Can they get off the beach before 24 hours age them 48 years?

What a clever idea. 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 explanations. Having said that, it sometimes feels like Shyamalan and his team have to pull punches to hold that PG-13. I wondered about the truly gruesome, Cronenberg version of this story that doesn’t shy away from what happens to the human body over time and doesn't feel a need to dot every 'i' and cross every 't'.

The actors all seem like they would have been willing to go on that more surreal journey. Most of the ensemble finds a way to push through a script that really uses them like a kid uses sand toys on a beach, moving them around before they wash away with the tide. Stand-outs include Sewell’s confused menace, McKenzie’s palpable fear (she nails that the best, by far, understanding she's in a horror movie more than some of the others), and the grounded center provided by Bernal and Krieps.

A director who often veers right when he should arguably go left, Shyamalan and his collaborators manage their tone here better than he has in years. Yes, the dialogue is clunky and almost entirely expositional regarding their plight and attempts to escape it, but that’s a feature, not a bug. “Old” should have an exaggerated, surreal tone and Shyamalan mostly keeps that in place, assisted greatly by some of the best work yet by his regular cinematographer Mike Gioulakis . The pair are constantly playing with perception and forced POV, fluidly gliding their camera up and down the beach as if it’s rushing to catch up with all the developments as they happen. Some of the framing here is inspired, catching a corner of a character’s head before revealing they’re now being played by a new actor. It’s as visually vibrant a film as Shyamalan has made in years, at its best when it's embracing its insanity. The waves are so loud and the rock wall is so imposing that they almost feel like characters.

Sadly, the film crashes when it decides to offer some sane explanations and connect dots that didn’t really need to be connected. There’s a much stronger version of “Old” that ends more ambiguously, allowing viewers to leave the theatre playing around with themes instead of unpacking exactly what was going on. The conversation around Shyamalan often focuses on his final scenes, and I found the ones in “Old” some of his most frustrating given how they feel oppositional to what works best about the movie. When his characters are literally trying to escape the passage of time, as people do when their kids are growing up too fast or they receive a mortality diagnosis, “Old” is fascinating and entertaining. It’s just too bad that it doesn’t age into its potential.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film Credits

Rated PG-13 for strong violence, disturbing images, suggestive content, partial nudity and brief strong language.

108 minutes

Gael García Bernal as Guy

Vicky Krieps as Prisca

Rufus Sewell as Charles

Alex Wolff as Trent Aged 15

Nikki Amuka-Bird as Patricia

M. Night Shyamalan

Writer (based on the graphic novel "Sandcastle" by)

Pierre-Oscar Levy
Frederick Peeters

Cinematographer

Mike Gioulakis
Brett M. Reed
Trevor Gureckis

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User Reviews
The premise feels very familiar (desert island beach; time slips; weird things happening.... "Lost" anyone?). But as a shell for a big-screen adventure it kept me well-engaged.
Shyamalan and his "Glass" cinematographer Mike Gioulakis use some novel techniques to portray the ageing effects. The angles used feel quite Hitchcockian at times. Shyamalan supports this with the sound design, which makes this a REALLY good movie to watch in a cinema with good surround sound. Often the camera will be spinning showing nothing but ocean or rocks, with the character's conversation rotating behind you in the cinema. It's really quite effective.
Shyamalan knows that no visual effects can improve on the horrors your mind can come up with. Although a '15' certificate, the "sustained threat, strong violence and injury detail" referenced by the BBFC pales into insignificance (in terms of what you actually see) compared to the equally rated "Freaky".
I've seen other reviews comment that the "twist" (no spoilers here) was obvious. But, although not a ground-breaking idea, I was sufficiently satisfied with the denouement. It made sense, albeit twisted sense.
I enjoyed the movie's leisurely set-up, introducing the characters and the movie's concept. (In many ways, it felt like the start of one of Irwin Allen's disaster movies of the 70's and 80's). But then Shyamalan turns the dial up to 11 and the action becomes increasingly farcical. Add into that the fact that you can see some of the 'jolts' coming a mile off, and the movie becomes progressively more disappointing, with a high ERQ (eye-rolling quotient) by the end.
In particular, there are inconsistencies to the story that get you asking uncomfortable questions. For example, wounds can heal in the blink of an eye.... but not stab wounds apparently.
The cast is truly global in nature: Vicky ("Phantom Thread") Krieps hails from Luxembourg; Bernal is Mexican; Sewell is a Brit; Amuka-Bird ("David Copperfield") is Nigerian; Leung is American; Eliza Scanlan is an Aussie; and Thomasin McKenzie (so good in "Jojo Rabbit", and good here too) is a Kiwi. But although it's clearly quite natural that an exotic beach resort would attract guests from all over the world, the combination of accents here makes the whole thing unfortunately sound like a dodgy spaghetti western!

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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.

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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’ Review: M. Night Shyamalan Turns a Day at the Beach Into a Nightmare of Aging. But Are His Gimmicks Getting Old?

It's a good premise, but the director doesn't explore it so much as he throws ideas against the wall.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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Everyone likes to talk about the big twist at the end of an M. Night Shyamalan movie: Was it good for you? Did you see it coming? Did it turn the rest of the movie into nonsense? (In some Shyamalan films, no twist is required to do that.) Yet for all the attention paid to Shyamalan’s trademark teasing grand finales, it’s the little twists in his movies — the ones that happen along the way — that can determine whether the film in question is spinning a yarn worth telling or just spinning its wheels.

In “ Old ,” Shyamalan’s latest is-it-clever-or-just-dumb-or-is-it-both? slow-burn creepshow, there’s a moment you either get past or you don’t. Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca ( Vicky Krieps ) are on vacation at a ritzy tropical-island resort along with their two children, 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and 6-year-old Trent (Nolan River). There’s a bit of drama the kids don’t know about; their folks are on the verge of splitting up, and Prisca has had a health scare. Nevertheless, the couple is putting on a good face, and they embrace an offer made by the unctuous Euro resort manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) to take a day trip to a special beach hidden behind a spectacular rocky cliff on the other side of the island. (The van driver is played by Shyamalan, who is now 50. For what it’s worth, he looks remarkably young.)

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What’s going on? The beach possesses a mysterious quality that ages anyone who’s on it. Every half an hour, you get one year older. It’s most noticeable with the children, but after a while mention is made of the small tumor that was detected in Prisca’s abdomen. It was three centimeters; now it’s the size of a golf ball — and then, minutes later, the size of a grapefruit. (It’s growing as quickly as she ages.) So what happens? Charles (Rufus Sewell), an eccentrically intense and jabbering physician, decides to operate — right there on the beach, without anesthesia. (It turns out that an incision will heal instantly.) Boom! — the tumor is out, just like that. But since the audience is still absorbing the premise of the movie — that just about everyone on the beach will be heading toward the grave within 24 hours — the fact that this impromptu surgery just sort of… happens , because Shyamalan thought it would be a cool idea, may stick in your moviegoing craw. It’s a twist more fanciful than logical, but Shyamalan doesn’t seem to care. He’s holding your attention!

“Old,” like most Shyamalan movies, has a catchy hook along with some elegant filmmaking gambits. But instead of developing his premise in an insidious and powerful way, the writer-director just keeps throwing things at you. That nude swimmer was the paramour of a famous rapper named Mid-Size Sedan (Aaron Pierre), who Charles the surgeon wastes no time accusing of murder. The movie cues us to think that’s a racist idea, yet isn’t above exploiting it for suspense. And why is the rapper’s nose bleeding? Charles and his high-maintenance wife, Chrystal (Abbey Lee), have an 11-year-old daughter of their own, Kara (Mikaya Fisher), and before long she and Trent, who are now teenagers, have hooked up, and she has gotten pregnant. And where are Guy and Prisca in all this? Bizarrely, they don’t look any older. Reference is made to wrinkles, and after a while we glimpse a few, but basically these two — and the other adults — just kind of remain the people they were, which seems extremely odd in a movie that is otherwise about such dramatic developments.

When you nitpick a thriller, you can sound like one of those people who Hitchcock referred to, with weary futility, as “the plausibles” (as if plausibility were the only thing that mattered to them). But “Old,” even once you accept where it’s going, lacks shape and consistency. It has a compelling off-kilter visual style, with the camera hinting at things just out of sight, but the characters keep explaining who they are in cliché psychotherapeutic soundbites; at times, the film threatens to turn into the “Twilight Zone” version of a 12-step meeting. The characters are trapped on that beach, and Shyamalan creates a convincing claustrophobia, but part of it is that you wish most of them were better company.

The real trouble with the movie is that its rules are so arbitrary. A corpse decays to bone in half an hour. The adults all age by barely visible increments. Each family, tellingly, has a malady — but some are physical, some mental. (Charles the surgeon is a head case who keeps wondering, for some godforsaken reason, which movie costarred Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando. It was “The Missouri Breaks,” for anyone playing movie “Jeopardy.”) One character ends up with a mass of contorted limbs like something out of a demonic-possession film. Another scales the vertical rock face to escape, then fatally falls asleep during the climb. A few of these issues come into focus with the big twist, which for a moment makes villainous characters look weirdly benign, then villainous again. More than ever, though, the twist in a Shyamalan film makes one ask: Was it worth sitting through the entire movie for this ? Or is that feeling getting old?

Reviewed at Crosby St. Screening Room, New York, July 21, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 108 MIN.

Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Blinding Edge Pictures production. Producers: M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock. Executive producer: Steven Schneider.
Crew: Director, screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan. Camera: Mike Gioulakis. Editor: Brett M. Reed. Music: Trevor Gureckis.
With: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Eliza Scanlen, Kathleen Chalfant, Gustaf Hammarsten, Thomasin McKenzie, Embeth Davidtz.

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Common Sense Says
Parents Say 15 Reviews
Kids Say 43 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Compelling concept, so-so execution; disturbing scenes.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 14+?

High body count: Characters succumb to everything from water (drowning) to one a

Brief shot of a woman's bare back and butt as she undresses to swim in the nude.

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

Adults get special cocktails when they arrive at the resort.

Any Positive Content?

Guy and Prisca try to protect their kids and calm people when they can. Patricia

Not many overtly positive messages, but it does explore moral ambiguity of certa

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.

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

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

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

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).

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.

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 .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (15)
Kids say (43)

Based on 15 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 : Indian/South Asian directors, 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 : August 5, 2024

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

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.

Gael Garcia Bernal: ‘I dare Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu to work with me again’

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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IMAGES

Old Movie Reviews
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How To Write A Movie Review? The Complete Guide
33 Best Classic Movies of All Time
33 Best Classic Movies of All Time
33 Best Classic Movies of All Time

COMMENTS

Old movie review & film summary (2021) | Roger Ebert
When M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old,” based on the book by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters, is playing thematically with those feelings and allowing itself to be surreal and scary in the process, it truly works.
Old | Rotten Tomatoes
A tropical holiday turns into a horrific nightmare when a family visits a secluded beach that somehow causes them to age rapidly -- reducing their entire lives into a single day.
Old (2021) - Old (2021) - User Reviews - IMDb
The film is silly yet serious, fun yet terrifying, thrilling yet amusing, ludicrous yet genius, and is often a cinematic ride of sharp contrasts. Overall, Old features a premise that not only exhibits promise & potential on paper but is also instantly appealing & downright ambitious.
‘Old’ Review: They Say Sun Can Age You, but This Is Ridiculous
‘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...
M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Old’: Film Review
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.
'Old' Review: Is M. Night Shyamalan's Gimmick ... - Variety
‘Old’ Review: M. Night Shyamalan Turns a Day at the Beach Into a Nightmare of Aging. But Are His Gimmicks Getting Old? Reviewed at Crosby St. Screening Room, New York, July 21, 2021.
Old Movie Review | Common Sense Media
Compelling concept, so-so execution; disturbing scenes. Read Common Sense Media's Old review, age rating, and parents guide.
Old - Movie Reviews | Rotten Tomatoes
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 ...
“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, review: A provocative horror that brings out the best ...
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.