Movie Review - Old (2021)

Ever since M. Night Shymalan's The Sixth Sense (1999) blew everyone away with its twist ending, he's become the master of twists or surprising reveals in the third acts of his film. However, since Shyamalan's Unbreakable (2000), those twists or reveals have mainly been people gas-lighting other people in elaborate or over-the-top ways. Specifically, in Unbreakable, the reveal was one man gas-lighting another man for the purpose of testing that other man's abilities for his own gains. In The Village (2004), the reveal was a group of people gas-lighting an even larger group of people. When Shymalan's reputation and career started to decline after that 2004 film, he backed away from that gas-lighting theme. Yet, he returned to it with The Visit (2015) where it was revealed that two older people were gas-lighting two younger people. Another theme that could be extracted from that 2015 thriller is that of inter-generational conflict where you had an older generation pitted against a younger one. Again, Shyamalan returned to the gas-lighting motif in Glass (2019) but in that case he was trying to comment on the super-hero genre.

If one knows that about Shyamalan, then one won't be surprised that this film is again in that vein. At least in previous films, Shyamalan was better at hiding it, so that when the third act came, the reveal was somewhat of a surprise. Perhaps, he himself is getting tired of the surprising reveal because the gas-lighting to be revealed here is very much telegraphed in the opening few minutes. He's almost obvious about it while attempting to be somewhat sly or inconspicuous. He's also probably doing so because he's trying to make a bigger point about the pharmaceutical industry and the criticism against it about how far it will go to make and market drugs or treatments for serious ailments. Those criticisms affect Americans at large but can be very much victimizing to the sick or elderly. Unfortunately, I don't think Shyamalan connects the dots to sell that on an emotional level.

Gael García Bernal (Babel and Bad Education) stars as Guy Cappa, a husband and father who has taken his wife and two children on vacation to some tropical island, possibly in the Caribbean. He loves his children, but he's apparently no longer in love with his wife. It's not clear why but private conversations tell us that Guy is about to divorce his wife and this vacation is just something nice for the children before he has to deliver bad news to them about their family. He takes them to a secluded beach where strange things start to happen.

Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread and Hanna) co-stars as Prisca Cappa, the aforementioned wife and mother to Guy's two children. The reason that she and Guy are getting a divorce has to do with her and her actions. She also has a serious medical condition that she doesn't want the children to know. Instead of connecting the dots back to the pharmaceutical industry, Shyamalan wants to make the marriage between Guy and Prisca apart of the emotional undercurrent here. However, Shymalan loses focus of that undercurrent because he's too busy with distracting camera moves.

I understand his impulse to do distracting camera moves or try to jazz up the film with overt cinematography. The majority of his film takes place in one location, the tiny beach within a rocky cove. In order to keep the film visually interesting, Shyamalan keeps moving and positioning the camera in ways that are awkward and weird. He's trying to convey a sense of awkward and weird because it helps with the overall creepy and thrilling tone here, but somehow Shyamalan's camerawork generates a distance between the audience and the characters that it makes the emotional journey he's crafting feel hollow. Some of his camerawork is Hitchcockian but Hitchcockian purely in a superficial way.

On the surface, this film is a natural horror or a horror film where the evil force is nature or some environmental entity. Often, that entity is a wild animal, such as Jaws (1975) or the more recent The Shallows (2016). Instead of something in the water, it could be the water itself, such as The Impossible (2012). Sometimes, it can be something in the air, such as Twister (1996). Shyamalan did a film where the entity is in the air and invisible. He called it The Happening (2008) and it was his second worst-rated film. That didn't stop him from doing this film where again the evil force is in the air and invisible. I will say that this film is better than that 2008 bomb, but probably not by much.

In addition to Guy, Prisca and their two children, other people show up at the secluded beach and become trapped there like lab rats. The lush environment and people stranded on a beach invoke images from the TV series Lost (2004), which makes it appropriate when Ken Leung appears. Leung was a cast member on Lost for three seasons. There was even a Lost knockoff that came out a couple of years ago called The I-Land (2019) by Anthony Salter on Netflix. If one has seen that series, Shyamalan's twist here is akin to the twist in Salter's series. Salter's twist though was akin to the twist in NBC's Persons Unknown (2010), created by Christopher McQuarrie and starring the late Chadwick Boseman.

Those TV shows, as derivative as they were, had time to explore the characters, develop the characters and have us come to care about them. That way, we could buy into the scenario a bit more. With as short a film as this is and with so many characters, that proposition is difficult to juggle. In addition to Guy and Prisca and their two children, Shyamalan juggles a half-dozen other people. Pretty much all of them get short shrift or just pencil sketches of who they are. Aaron Pierre (The Underground Railroad) who plays a rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan gets the shortest of shrift.

This film could have been an interesting thriller on the level of something like the episode of The Twilight Zone titled "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" (1961). It could have been on the level of something like the episode of The X-Files titled "Død Kalm" (1995). Even though I wasn't a fan of it, this film could have been on the level of a film like The Cabin in the Woods (2011). Seemingly, Shyamalan pulls from all three of those things, but Shyamalan can't help but get in his own way. Literally, he gets in his own way when he himself shows up on screen.

Rated PG-13 for strong violence, disturbing images, partial nudity and brief language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 48 mins.

In theaters.