Old (2021)

Old is the most Shyamalan film M Night Shyamalan has done in a while. It's like a return to his classic style. Old is an intriguing if absurd premise with a big ass twist near the end that changes how you look at things. Also stylistically he has returned to form with his signature expository talky dialogue and unsettling cinematography. His style has a love-it-or-hate-it quality that is polarizing. For me, even when his films don't quite work, I usually still enjoy them and get something out of them. That's pretty much true of Old as well. 

Old, like a lot of his films, is a Twilight Zone style story, unsettling without being typically scary. If you are familiar at all with the premise then you know it's about a group of people stuck on a beach who start rapidly aging. The concept is very high but he commits to it. What I struggled with was the way the characters explained what was going on to each other (and therefore us) all the time, but as they did I still found myself getting pulled deeper and deeper into the mystery and the quite horrifying truth that was coming at the end of it. Why the story works is that if you can get past some of the clunkiness of the narrative, it does get you to think about things fascinating things. It makes you ask questions that don't have easy or nice answers. For me the story and performances were compelling enough to get me to the part that was really interesting and I could get stuck there on that island too. 

Then comes the twist, a twist which makes us ask a whole new set of questions. I didn't enjoy the rapid wrapping up of the story which felt a little too easy. It could have been less "resolved" in the end and had the same effect, or perhaps an even better effect. But I still enjoyed where the film went with the story, both in terms of how narratively it works (it explains quite a bit that otherwise would have felt too pat) but also the moral quandary of the new reality is also quite interesting. 

So in the end I appreciated that Shyamalan is back to doing his thing. I know that for many it's just not to their taste and I get that. But I can get on board one of his wild rides. This one had some bumps that almost threw me off, but I stuck with it and was glad I did in the end. 

Old

Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, Aaron Pierre, M Night Shyamalan

Writer/Director: M Night Shyamalan