#old 2021 review

[agentnico]

Old (2021) Review

Goodness gracious the amount of foreshadowing featured in this film is beguiling! In the opening 5 minutes most of the characters make mention of age and time like a gazillion times and how one needs to enjoy their younger years and learn to smell the roses and such. I get it, we’re watching a film about a beach where people grow old faster, no need to bash us over the head with it. Dare I say, we don’t have time for it!

Plot: A family on a tropical holiday discovers that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly reducing their entire lives into a single day.

M. Night Shyamalan is a very hit-and-miss director. Known for his brain teasing plot twists, he’s done some amazing thrillers such as The Sixth Sense and his Unbreakable trilogy, but he’s also the guy who conjured up The Happening about plants killing people where Mark Wahlberg spends the entire film walking around with this expression:

And this face:

Oh and dare I not forget this:

Honestly, to this day no one really knows what was happening in The Happening and as it happens, no one will ever happen to know. But we’re not here to talk about that film as Shyamalan is back with a new thriller that features a pretty intriguing original concept, but does that concept result in a good film?

Hmmm... how do I go about describing Old? As stated prior, the film features a clever synopsis, however all the rest surrounding that plot is, to put it in a nutshell - silly. The dialogue is astonishingly badly written. Characters speak like they are puppets reading from a monitor and whenever someone is talking about something medical or scientific it feels like the scriptwriter (who also happens to be Shyamalan, that cheeky rascal) simply Googled the facts and copied and pasted them into the dialogue without trying to re-edit it somewhat to make it sound like a real life person is saying them. Didn’t help that the actors delivering the lines didn’t do a particularly great job either. Which is surprising as the film features a generally talented cast including renowned Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps (who managed to hold her own opposite masterclass actor Daniel Day-Lewis in his final film before retirement Phantom Thread) and Rufus Sewell who is known for his sleazy creepy overbearingly uneasy villainous roles. Also younger Hollywood talent Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie make appearances. However in this movie all of them are caricatured, act strange and their characters constantly make questionable decisions and are generally unlikable. 

Shyamalan is a talented filmmaker. I’m all for directors experimenting with interesting camera angles and shots as long as there is a purpose for it. However here Shyamalan tried to be experimental by poorly positioning the camera so as to cut half of the characters’ faces during close-ups and having many shots appear out of focus, and at times you can see him doing so as to hide the reveal that characters are growing older, but at times (most of the time to be honest) it came off as pretentious and distracting.

Throughout this movie you sit there wondering “is this a comedy?” For this movie features so many evidently unintentional funny moments, purely from how weird and at times ludicrous it is. I can say safely that I did enjoy myself from beginning to the end. There isn’t a dull moment in this, but it’s not for the right reasons. The movie tries to built this feeling of tension and dread, but it comes off as stupid and as such quite laughable. For example, a character gets pregnant at one point, and the way how that scenario comes about is handled....well....basically there are many unanswered questions and one of those questions is does sexual education even need to exist if younglings can find this all out by themselves no problemo? Look, this movie gets weird, okay? You kind of wonder how much crazier this film can get, which results in an enjoyable watching experience. It’s not a good movie by any means, in fact it’s a roll-your-eyes bad one, but one that brings entertainment in how stupid it is.

Overall score: 5/10