Let's go to the beach that makes us 'Old'

Shyamalan's latest is flawed, but effective.

The movies are back, baby. 

Of course, that’s a loaded phrase these days. In some areas of the country, moviegoing never went away, while other cities have only seen a return to theaters in the last month. Big studio releases are coming out, with films like A Quiet Place Part II, F9 and Black Widow opening big. But many of these releases crater in their second week. Movies that open in exclusively theatrical formats and movies that are also streaming open to healthy numbers and, with few exceptions, take a big dip. 

The most reasonable explanation is that movies are back, but not everyone else is. The general audiences who would flock to the theater every Friday just to kill time don’t seem to be returning. Based on what I’ve seen in my visits, I don’t think families are coming back in droves. I think the people heading to the movies are people who love to go, and they have very specific ideas of what they want to see each week. The “let’s just go to the theater and see what’s playing” mentality seems to have dissipated for now, and I don’t know that it’s coming back any time soon, if ever, in the age of streaming. 

Which is a shame, because I feel like I’m finally having a good time going back to the movies. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve long been happy to be back. Moviegoing has long been at least a weekly part of my life, and I missed it dearly when theaters were shut down. And it’s been fun to go back and see big movies like Godzilla vs. Kong on the big screen. 

But something has been missing. While I’ve enjoyed the spectacle, it’s all felt a bit obligatory. I’ve liked much of what I’ve seen, but loved very little. I’ve been given exactly what I expect, no more, no less. Black Widow is fun, but it’s a Marvel movie through and through. There’s no surprise there, nothing to chew on. LIkewise, F9 and Quiet Place 2 were enjoyable experiences, but they left little to think about or digest. They were McDonald’s hamburgers; I knew what I was getting into and they didn’t disappoint, but neither did they really give me anything new. 

What I missed was that feeling of being sent out of the theater not really knowing what I thought about a movie, including whether I liked it. I missed the fun of mulling over artistic choices, wondering what a director was up to and why I reacted the way I did. I missed leaving a movie and feeling like I’d seen something worth devoting brain cells to. I missed movies that stuck to my ribs. 

Well, my friends, over the last two weeks, three movies have returned me to that feeling. They’re not all great movies — at least one might very well be bad; I’m still not sure — but all three are movies that left me thinking about them and craving a dialogue on them. So, I thought this week, we’d talk about them.

I went a little long talking about this first one, so we’re going to break this up a bit. Today, you’ll get my thoughts on Old. Later in the week, I’ll share my thoughts on Stillwater and The Green Knight. All three are playing exclusively in theaters right now, and all three are worth your time. 

Today, let’s talk about M. Night Shyamalan’s latest. 

Old

I will always root for M. Night Shyamalan. It’s probably unwise, and most of the time I’m going to get my heart broken, but I can’t help it. Whenever he releases a movie, I’m pulling for him. 

That’s how much his work amazed me in the late nineties and early aughts. I was one of many who sat in a theater feeling dizzy when The Sixth Sense revealed its final twist. I marveled over the fact that he was taking comic books seriously with Unbreakable. I held my breath through most of Signs and will defend The Village as a much more successful film about fear culture than many give it credit for. 

Shyamalan has made stinkers. Lady in the Water is a work of bloated hubris. The Happening is silly and bonkers in ways that defy explanation. The Last Airbender is one of the more interminable things I’ve ever suffered through in a movie theater. The backlash against Shyamalan didn’t come because he made some bad movies. It’s because his fall was so big. I mean, how do you go from The Sixth Sense to The Happening? 

And yet, I still always hope he’ll pull out another thrilling experience. Sometimes, as with Split, I’m rewarded. Other times, I get Glass. 

With Old, I’m still a little bit torn on whether it’s a good movie or a bad one. But the farther I get from it, the more I tilt toward the former. Shyamalan’s most frustrating tendencies are on display, but there’s also enough creative energy and originality here that I can’t fully discount it. And just as often as it made me groan, it made me shudder or even moved me. 

It’s a simple concept: A group of tourists at a resort are taken to a secluded beach for a relaxing afternoon. Quickly, however, they realize that something is off about the beach. They’re growing old quickly, aging years in a matter of hours. This is most notable with the children, but it’s not long before the adults begin to see the wrinkles and gray showing up quickly. And there seems to be a mysterious force that won’t let them leave the beach. 

I’ll admit this film strikes me at a particular time. I’m firmly in middle age; I just turned 42 last week, and getting older, coupled with everything happening to the globe right now, has put mortality on my mind. I notice every new speck of gray, and analyze every ache and pain. Likewise, my kids were just toddlers; now one is pushing 10 and the other is about to enter kindergarten. I’ve lost three of my four grandparents in the last three years, and my parents are now among the oldest members of our family. It’s surreal and scary. 

That’s the terror at the heart of Old, and in its best moments, Shyamalan captures the horror of aging in a visceral manner. It works best as a piece of body horror, the children confused and frightened about aging through adolescence in an afternoon and the adults suffering the ravages of accelerated body breakdowns. Shyamalan’s strength has always been in his visuals, and I appreciate the dreamlike way his camera floats around, and the ways he holds back his reveals until the moment they’ll achieve maximum impact. 

It’s been awhile since he’s done a straight horror film, and Old is a reminder how relentless and masterful he is at bringing the scares. Once the characters reach the beach, the film tosses one situation after another at them. In addition to just the general eeriness of rapid aging, there are medical complications, impromptu surgeries and other twists that move at a bullet’s pace, rarely letting up and delivered with almost unbearable suspense. 

I wish, though, that Shyamalan had built in a few more beats to allow audiences to catch their breath or grapple with the emotion of the situation. There’s a sadness to the characters’ plight that the film rarely stops to take in, too intent on delivering the next scare. The film hints at the existential angst of watch your children or parents age, but never really marinates in it. Near the end, when the film finally slows down enough to allow its core family to deal with questions of regret and acceptance, it has a few affecting and haunting moments. But I wish the film had really leaned into the true horror of confronting mortality instead of just the physical ordeal of getting old. Then again, we already have Synecdoche, New York. 

Shyamalan’s directorial abilities are confident here, his camerawork shrewd and playful. He’s the rare director who’s a household name who can also take big swings and work without being tied to existing IP (yes, I know the film is based on a graphic novel called Sandcastle, but that’s not necessarily Marvel); Shyamalan is the brand. And I applaud his willingness to go big because it results in several memorable moments. There’s a mid-film plot development between two of the children that teeters between bugnuts goofy and terrifying, but Shyamalan makes it work. And there’s a chase through a cave that builds to one of the most grotesque and squeam-inducing images I’ve seen in a film in a long time. 

And yet, Shyamalan can’t help but indulge his worst impulses. He has a fantastic cast at his disposal, including Gabriel Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell and Thomasin MacKenzie. When called upon, they sell the hell out of the emotion. But when delivering exposition, Shyamalan has them deliver their lines in an odd cadence. It’s not exactly monotone, but it sounds stilted, off. And it’s not helped by his overly didactic dialogue. It’s a choice Shyamalan’s made in a few of his films, and it’s part of his signature as a director. But I’ll admit it’s one I’ve never warmed to; it keeps the characters at a remove. What he seems to intend as dreamlike feels too much like artifice, and the film is hard to engage with whenever the scares slow down. 

And then, of course, comes the Shyamalan ending. Old doesn’t really have a traditional twist, in that something is revealed that puts the entire film in a new perspective. But there’s an extra 15 minutes that feels interminable and pointless, delivering explanations where none are needed and grafting on a level of cultural commentary that is inessential. This kind of final act reveal is common in these type of films, but what makes Old’s denouement so dispiriting is that it follows a sequence that, had it been the film’s end point, would have been one of the more thought-provoking and haunting final images in a Shyamalan film. 

And yet, I can’t dismiss Old. It’s flawed, but when it works, it works well. It’s scary and mean, and yet it also has some of Shyamalan’s most gorgeous competitions and lush cinematography. There’s something original and risky here, and few other big-name directors are being given the opportunity to do these things. So even if I can’t fully recommend Old on its merits, I applaud the attempt. 

I’ll be back in a few days with thoughts on Stillwater and The Green Knight. In the meantime, what did you think of Old? Share your thoughts!