The career of M. Night Shyamalan is one of the fascinating case studies of a filmmaker that had a strong promise in the beginning but got way too much in his own mind and started to dip off drastically. He struck box office gold and critical success with his first big feature film with The Sixth Sense in 1999, earning him two Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, to which he wrote himself. The following year, Shyamalan created a small and very grounded superhero movie with Unbreakable, teaming up with Bruce Willis again and some might say that’s Shyamalan’s best movie. Some might disagree, but his follow up in Signs was (at the time) his most technically and most proficient movie because of how much it reminded audiences when Steven Spielberg made Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But it’s when The Village came out that the quality of Shyamalan’s directing starting to become a question to some. The Village is certainly not his worst movie and since it’s release the movie has developed a strong cult following. But the Shyamalan band wagon wasn’t showing much support when he released Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender and After Earth. With poor movie after poor movie, Shyamalan started to become a joke, even though he’s already provided some good work in the past. In 2015, however, M. Night Shyamalan released this microscopic budget horror movie called The Visit which didn’t necessarily bring his career back in spades but it almost was a little bit of a resurgence for him but then once Spilt came out, Shyamalan was back. That said, his follow up with Glass was an underwhelming attempt on really capturing something special within the superhero genre. Despite the downs that he’s had, M. Night Shyamalan is a director we should continue to support because he’s always bending the ideas of original storytelling and doing something new with it. Old is definitely something that’s in his wheelhouse and is very ambitious simultaneously, unfortunately everything from the execution, writing and overall performances come off as flat and unintentionally funny. He’s blending in the style of a Twilight Zone episode but all the elements feel dead and a little too wacky to get invested. He’s playing around with some interesting social discussions about agism and certain health conditions but the merits of this movie distract you from the wild incoherence and overtly serious tone that this movie has going for it.
Based on a graphic novel by Frederik Peeters, Old focuses on a family and other esteemed guests on a tropical beach for vacation but they soon realize that the beach is causing everyone to age rapidly and develop other mental and health concerns.
Old does have something that’s somewhat worth the watch and that is the concept and some of themes that M. Night Shyamalan has in his sand box. In principle, this is a very intriguing story and also somewhat of a gamble for Shyamalan, which is kind of the frustrating part about him. You don’t know what to expect from a Shyamalan movie because he’s the guy that’s known for having the twist ending at the end of his movie or some major reveal that catches everybody off guard. With Old, you do get some story reveal and see Shyamalan be Shyamalan. That being said, this movie is very muddled and the tone of this movie comes off as silly, which is why everything in this movie feels a lot more serious than it probably needed to be. The biggest problem with Old is the actual writing, which then leads into the clunky performances. Now every movie has to be pitched to a studio executive in order for it to get a thumbs up and a go to move into production. The being the case, the script and creative flow of it feels as if there’s was no input or any form of correction that it desperately needed. The line deliveries and every form of dialogue feels like it’s in the moment. In other words, it’s almost as if we’re watching these actors read their lines for the fist time which then leads to how this movie is directed. This movie is all over the place from the moment our characters take one step on the beach. There’s a number of shots that Shyamalan uses that felt totally out of place and feel almost like a first take, which adds more to the frustration you’ll have while watching this movie.
M. Night Shyamalan has a neat ensemble of actors when you consider that virtually none of them are huge house hold names. However, none of the characters are likable, but their performances are so monotoned and expressionless that the whole crux of this movie just washes away to shore. The characters in this movie don’t feel like real people due to how inept they are. It’s really unfortunate because whether it’s James McAvoy’s performance in Split, Bruce Willis’ performance from The Sixth Sense or even Anya Taylor Joy from Split, M, Night Shyamalan has been known to showcase great performances with his actors, but it never seemed like there was strong relationship with the actors or the director while on set during production.
In the end, Old is awfully familiar to another M. Night Shyamalan movie that involved plants and strong winds. There’s too many cooks in the kitchen and things don’t feel like has a proper place in this movie. The rendering of everything just fails miserably and as much as we want to root for Shyamalan, he’s gotta step his game up.
My grade for Old: D
Zane's take at the Cinema's 