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Feeling Old


Back around the time Signs came out, M. Night Shyamalan was rather infamously labeled by NewsWeek “the next Spielberg”. And this has frequently been brought up in the years since as a barometer of how far he has fallen, the general regard of his movies having sunken from intrepid, thoughtful thrillers, to awkward, mockable trainwrecks. Occasionally, a movie like The Visit or Split would resuscitate some goodwill for the once promising filmmaker, but his reputation has largely remained (since at least Lady in the Water) that of a bad, misguided director whose movies are rife for lampooning and not much else. Shyamalan himself appeared in a short presentation ahead of Old though, mostly to deliver a standard thank-you to audiences for coming out to the theatre and acknowledging of the importance of the theatrical experience. And he said he is thankful he’s been able to make original thrillers for twenty years. That stuck out to me. M Night Shyamalan has been making movies for over two decades now, and with the exception of The Last Airbender and Old (which is based on a little-known graphic novel), they have all been original and all have been different from one another. He’s one of a handful of directors who’s maintained name recognition (though often only for racists to make fun of) in the popular consciousness for decades. And he’s never really bowed to a trend -excepting arguably Glass, his own crossover superhero event. He’s kept his own artistic integrity. That NewsWeek headline may not have been entirely inaccurate.
There’s a slight shift evident in the fact that Old is not universally reviled -when it absolutely would have been a decade ago. Perhaps we’re slightly more sympathetic now to Shyamalan the underdog, or that the saturation of high-concept franchise blockbusters has rendered any deviation refreshing. It could also be that Old is simply better than a lot of his other films (this is true), but regardless the response is indicative of a renewed attitude some critics and audiences have adopted towards this irrepressible director.
Nonetheless I found the movie rather frustrating. It’s a Twilight Zone kind of concept: a group of strangers at a resort travel to a secluded beach that mysteriously entraps them and ages them roughly a year each half hour. Shyamalan recognizes a lot of the potential in this premise, not only for suspense but for the creativity that could come out of it in terms of the myriad effects of aging. One character becomes more senile, dementia settles in, while another begins to lose their eyesight. Characters get cut and their scars heal within seconds. Shyamalan has considered a lot of such ideas, and he has a good sense of how to depict them too, to often freaky effect. But as is often the case, his script proves to be his Achilles heel. Shyamalan can be a good director, but he has never been much of a writer and Old bears many of his worst writing trademarks.
It starts with the dialogue, which as unfortunately is common with his movies, is full of utterly bizarre expressions, awkwardly phrased interactions, non sequiturs, and ill-timed exposition. None of the characters trapped on the beach sound like human beings -in a way it sort of works for the younger set, growing into older bodies as their intellectual maturity remains stunted. The adults though have less excuses introducing themselves to everyone with their occupation as though it were relevant or bringing up random personal details in lieu of these things actually being expressed organically (there are a lot of “as you know’s” in the film). I think a key problem is that Shyamalan feels the need to explain so much and doesn’t know how to integrate any of it into the film naturally. He’s doing that thing I hate in some movies, where he’s preemptively anticipating the bad faith criticisms of the film and trying to get ahead of them by covering for perceived plot holes. It’s a screenwriting tactic that always makes the film worse. No one can accuse Old of not explaining itself, but neither can they accuse it of being coherent.
Some of that exposition is necessary for particular beats, but is only brought up at the critical moment. A good example is one character stabbing another with a rusted knife and then explaining how rust poisoning gets into the bloodstream as their victim is experiencing the rapid transmutation resulting from that. It’s set-up that comes simultaneous to if not technically after the pay-off, neutering that pay-off in the process; and instances of it occur throughout the movie. Shyamalan also includes stuff in the script that’s clearly only meant to play for himself: Ken Leung’s character repeatedly stating his name is Jarin for example -which must be an amusing joke for the director, or Rufus Sewell’s Charles getting hung up on trying to remember the name of a very specific movie.
This script predictably effects the performances, and Shyamalan isn’t all that equipped to guide them. The younger actors playing teenage versions of young children are perhaps the most confused, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, and Eliza Scanlen visibly struggle through much of their screen-time to find direction, often over-playing a beat or line of dialogue (their aging rapidity is also notably inconsistent to the adults’). Vicky Krieps and Rufus Sewell manage modestly better, as does Nikki Amuka-Bird -though Gael Garcia Bernal is probably the only cast member to come out relatively unscathed, largely transcending the peculiarities of the script and most acutely honing in on the pulse of the material.
It is there, that pulse, underneath the poor plotting -Shyamalan has some very cogent points to make about the aging process and the passage of time. While some things, like epilepsy and hypocalcemia are illustrated extremely for shock, he treats things like deafness and dementia with much more care. And he’s fascinated by the ways we can perceive time as both stagnant and moving too fast -a sensation we’re all familiar with this side of the pandemic. It genuinely is illuminating in broad strokes how the different characters respond to their circumstance as well. His point-of-view couple in the process of divorce, can only reconcile in literally seeing their children grow up before their eyes. There is something very interesting there, clouded perhaps by a weakness in delivery. One of the best scenes is just them eventually resigned to their fate watching the tide go out in bliss -it might be one of Shyamalan’s best directed moments. And in fairness he does have a few others in this film -particularly where the suspense is concerned. If nothing else, Old delivers on the freakiness of the premise. There’s a birthing scene shot in a single take where Shyamalan tracks around the beach to everyone responding with gripping tension. There are a number of shots too clearly inspired by Bergman in their framing, that likewise heighten the stakes by limiting the audience’s visual scope. Additionally he’s cited movies like The Exterminating Angel and Picnic at Hanging Rock as influences, and it is tangible in the films’ structure and aesthetic respectively. This is a genuinely well-directed movie in a lot of places. Shyamalan even uses the environment to his advantage (it’s a very pretty one), and I admire that the special effects with regards to the aging are much subtler than is common these days -slight wrinkles, strands of gray hair, tighter skin tones -which both reinforces the films’ ticking clock and accentuates the distinctions in pace of the aging between the generations.
This movie might have the least surprising Shyamalan twist (he projects it fairly early), but the details of that twist are interesting to say the least -especially in who they concern and as it plays right now. It sends a message that’s maybe not the most responsible to send in 2021 and it’s also not a terribly compelling twist on top of that. Shyamalan has made himself associated with that device, and not in a good way, it would be nice to see him abandon it.
In the process of this review I’ve probably developed more of a respect for Old than I had going in, but I still don’t think it succeeds enough to be called good. It very much could have been if Shyamalan had entrusted it to another screenwriter who could give the movie less of a bumpy flow and had a better handle on convincing dialogue. The spirit of the piece is in the right place and Shyamalan demonstrates some of the skills necessary to carry it out. For that it’s a curiosity worth watching, but we’re still a ways out from a return to his glory years.

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