The first thing that struck me about Old, before the allure of its high-concept premise about a beach that rapidly ages anyone who sets foot on it, is how disorientating and amateurishly it is shot. For a seasoned thriller director like Shyamalan, it seems to be an intentional creative decision, if a baffling one. Rather than following in a conventional manner camera is usually a minute or two behind a character's actions, if it can even be bothered to keep up. The film has a fixation on uncomfortable close-ups and questionable actor blocking. Supposedly, Shyamalan was aiming for Kurosawa, but his cinematography instead reminds me of the permanently out-of-frame tall guy from The Naked Gun. The quality of both the acting and the screenplay are all over the place, varying from painfully awkward to halfway decent, depending on the scene.
If you are somehow able to get past all that... surprisingly enough, it's not a terrible movie. From its title to its dialogue, Old is about as subtle as a cudgel, but the alternative of leaving too much room for ambiguity in this once instance may have also been a mistake. Since the premise may seem like a factory of obvious plot holes waiting to be called out, Shyamalan deftly guides the viewer through all the rules of the setting in order to make the scenario of a group of tourists trapped in a picturesque cove somewhat believable. Once they are on the beach, the characters rapidly age at a consistent rate; any physical or mental ailment they may have progressively worsens at the same accelerated pace; any wound they sustain almost instantly heals itself by the same logic; they cannot leave through the cave entrance because a mysterious force makes them blackout and sends them back to the beach; attempts to climb the rock formation end the same way; they cannot swim against the violent tide or they drown. Going in, I was unconvinced that the film would satisfyingly cover every potential loophole that the protagonists could exploit, but it does.
While establishing rules and regulations is all well and good for sci-fi solicitors in the audience, the film excels on an emotional level by portraying a microcosm of how humans interact with time and mortality. Time kills our vanity, it tears our loved ones away from us, it throws a spanner in every plan and scheme we try to cook up to make sense of it all. However, by taking a more grounded approach to the story than the graphic novel source material, Shyamalan — perhaps unwisely — ends up confusing whatever message it may have been trying to send, in terms of how one can really fight the very passage of time. Despite some harsh comparisons, Old is not Shyamalan's attempt at a B-movie, but it's fair to say it's no A-movie, either.
Film A fun psychological thriller undercut by its script and cinematography
The first thing that struck me about Old, before the allure of its high-concept premise about a beach that rapidly ages anyone who sets foot on it, is how disorientating and amateurishly it is shot. For a seasoned thriller director like Shyamalan, it seems to be an intentional creative decision, if a baffling one. Rather than following in a conventional manner camera is usually a minute or two behind a character's actions, if it can even be bothered to keep up. The film has a fixation on uncomfortable close-ups and questionable actor blocking. Supposedly, Shyamalan was aiming for Kurosawa, but his cinematography instead reminds me of the permanently out-of-frame tall guy from The Naked Gun. The quality of both the acting and the screenplay are all over the place, varying from painfully awkward to halfway decent, depending on the scene.
If you are somehow able to get past all that... surprisingly enough, it's not a terrible movie. From its title to its dialogue, Old is about as subtle as a cudgel, but the alternative of leaving too much room for ambiguity in this once instance may have also been a mistake. Since the premise may seem like a factory of obvious plot holes waiting to be called out, Shyamalan deftly guides the viewer through all the rules of the setting in order to make the scenario of a group of tourists trapped in a picturesque cove somewhat believable. Once they are on the beach, the characters rapidly age at a consistent rate; any physical or mental ailment they may have progressively worsens at the same accelerated pace; any wound they sustain almost instantly heals itself by the same logic; they cannot leave through the cave entrance because a mysterious force makes them blackout and sends them back to the beach; attempts to climb the rock formation end the same way; they cannot swim against the violent tide or they drown. Going in, I was unconvinced that the film would satisfyingly cover every potential loophole that the protagonists could exploit, but it does.
While establishing rules and regulations is all well and good for sci-fi solicitors in the audience, the film excels on an emotional level by portraying a microcosm of how humans interact with time and mortality. Time kills our vanity, it tears our loved ones away from us, it throws a spanner in every plan and scheme we try to cook up to make sense of it all. However, by taking a more grounded approach to the story than the graphic novel source material, Shyamalan — perhaps unwisely — ends up confusing whatever message it may have been trying to send, in terms of how one can really fight the very passage of time. Despite some harsh comparisons, Old is not Shyamalan's attempt at a B-movie, but it's fair to say it's no A-movie, either.