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Review: M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Old’ isn’t so bad, except when it’s terrible

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Watching “Old” will take about four years off your life — or just under two hours, depending on which way you’re reading your trusty temporal-wormhole conversion chart. The movie, you see, follows a group of unfortunate vacationers who get stuck on a private beach, where they fall victim to an alarming, irreversible, inexplicable process of accelerated aging. Did I say inexplicable? How silly of me. This is a thriller written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan , after all, which means there’s always an explanation or two or 200. It’s a wonder he isn’t still explaining it as the credits roll.

By the time they do, you may find yourself both exasperated and tickled by what you’ve seen: a gleaming slab of high-end, high-concept summer trash that really does play strange games with your perceptions and maybe even your tastes. “Old” grabs you right away, starts losing you at the half-hour mark, pulls you back in with some agreeably bonkers set pieces, drags you through a tedious closing stretch and finally leaves you in an oddly charitable mood: Say, that wasn’t so bad, except when it was terrible. It’s no small accomplishment. Some Shyamalan films can take years to start looking better with age (see: “The Village,” or maybe don’t), but “Old” pulls it off in record time.

That’s a good thing, since the clock is already ticking for Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and Guy (Gael García Bernal), the attractive, unhappily married couple we see arriving at a tropical island resort in the opening scenes. They’re calling it quits and taking one last family vacation together with their kids, Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and Trent (Nolan River), who are 11 and 6, but not for long. Everyone’s too distracted to notice the faintly creepy vibes at the resort, one of those all-inclusive getaways with stunning ocean views, personalized cocktails on arrival and a van (driven by Shyamalan himself, in one of his more prominent signature on-screen roles) that will chauffeur specially hand-selected guests to a secret cove on another side of the island.

It’s here that Guy, Prisca and the kids find themselves one afternoon, along with several other guests. While they have names, it may be best to identify each of them by the occupation and/or single personality trait that Shyamalan has saddled them with: There’s a rude doctor (Rufus Sewell), his beauty-obsessed wife (Abbey Lee), their cute daughter (Kylie Begley) and her sweet grandmother (Kathleen Chalfant). There’s a soulful rapper (Aaron Pierre), a helpful nurse (Ken Leung) and his perhaps over-helpful psychiatrist wife (Nikki Amuka-Bird). And then there’s the corpse that washes up that afternoon, the first sign that something on this beach is very, very wrong.

More signs follow. A small tumor inflates to the size of a grapefruit within seconds. Digitally rendered wrinkles appear on the older travelers’ faces, while cuts and wounds heal with alarming rapidity. Maddox and Trent are suddenly recast with older actors (Thomasin McKenzie and Luca Faustino Rodriguez), like wee moppets suddenly morphing into angsty teens on “Days of Our Lives.” As you’d expect and perhaps even want from a slasher movie where Time itself is wielding the sickle, the body count escalates fast. They’ll all be dead within days or even hours, they realize, and whenever they try to leave — to exit through the surrounding caves or swim past the heavy currents — the beach has an unnerving way of yanking them back.

And “Old,” adapted from Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters’ graphic novel “Sandcastle,” is just getting started. How to describe the long, noisy, stabby, increasingly unhinged passages that follow? “Gilligan’s Island” as reimagined by Luis Buñuel? Ed Wood’s “L’Avventura”? “The Curious Case of Benjamin Beach Bum”? I’m spitballing here, and so, on some level, is Shyamalan. Burrowing into the outlandish biomedical implications of his premise, he pulls off one or two amusingly grisly sequences, at least one of which suggests that even premature aging has its undeniable uses. He steeps his characters in a familiar, quintessentially Shyamalanian fog of panic and paranoia, in which they struggle to believe, let alone explain, the extraordinary phenomena transpiring before their eyes.

What he doesn’t do is come close to generating so much as a flurry of real suspense or terror — a failing that can be chalked up to the surprising ineptitude of the filmmaking. This is dispiriting to report, given that Shyamalan’s undersung signature as a storyteller has always been his superior eye, his skill at patiently building tension and suspense inside the frame. Even when he loses his narrative way or gets bogged down in metaphysical portent, his visual command seldom abandons him.

Until now. Shyamalan seems weirdly at a loss for how to stage action in this confined yet open space, and his actors are often left standing around in stiff, awkward formations. (The fast-mutating ensemble also includes Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliott, Alex Wolff, Eliza Scanlen and Mikaya Fisher.) The camera lurches around these sandy minimalist environs, whipping up flurries of psychodrama but never quite finding the ideal placement. The dialogue is even clumsier, all forehead-smacking exposition (“Our cells are aging very fast here!” “The dog’s dead!”) in a script that tends to tell twice as much as it shows. In trying to capture a group state of mental and physiological free fall, the filmmaker merely exposes the limits of his own control.

So why, in spite of all that, does “Old” still inspire a spasm of retroactive goodwill? Maybe because after the murky, misbegotten “Glass,” it’s nice to see Shyamalan doing a deranged one-off, taking the movie equivalent of an invigorating stroll in the sun. Maybe because the story concludes not with a shocking, credulity-straining twist, but rather an explanation that, in light of all that has preceded it, feels curiously coherent, even intuitive. Maybe because of the wondrous Vicky Krieps, whose lovely, breathy understatement finds expressive notes that few of her co-stars can match. (Look out for her in the upcoming “Bergman Island,” a vastly superior movie about an estranged couple on an island where reality begins to blur.)

Or maybe it’s just that “Old,” a story of collective bodily breakdown arriving in the midst of a pandemic, builds to an obvious but appreciably stirring note. It acknowledges the reality of just how quickly time passes and how cruelly loved ones can be ripped away. Maybe it’s true that life is too short for bad movies. Or maybe it’s too short not to take what pleasure in them you can.

Rating: PG-13, for strong violence, disturbing images, suggestive content, partial nudity and brief strong language Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes Playing: Opens July 23 in general release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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A family heads to a secluded beach vacation. They speak vaguely of the passage of time in a way that parents often do with their children, as mom mentions how she can’t wait to hear her daughter’s singing voice when she grows up. Shortly thereafter, it’s revealed that mom may not be able to do that because she has a tumor and this could be a “last trip,” either because of her physical health or the health of her crumbling marriage. The passage of time changes at different points in your life, but especially when you see your kids growing up too fast and when you worry you might not be able to witness the bulk of their journey. When M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old,” based on the book by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters, is playing thematically with those feelings and allowing itself to be surreal and scary in the process, it truly works. When it feels like it has to nail down specifics, such as in a disappointing final stretch, it crosses that median line into the silly lane. The mysteries of aging are something everyone considers—“Old” taps into those considerations with just enough style to engage before stepping back from its own edge.

The family in the opening scene consists of Guy ( Gael García Bernal ), Prisca ( Vicky Krieps ), Trent ( Nolan River ) and Maddox ( Alexa Swinton ). The resort manager tells them about a secluded beach where they can avoid the touristy crowds, and they’re taken there by none other than Shyamalan himself in maybe his most meta cameo (after all, he’s the director, assembling all of his players on the sandy stage). Guy and Prisca’s clan isn’t alone. They’re joined by a doctor named Charles ( Rufus Sewell ), his wife Chrystal ( Abbey Lee ), his mother Agnes ( Kathleen Chalfant ) and his daughter Kara ( Mikaya Fisher ). A third couple joins them in Jarin ( Ken Leung ) and Patricia ( Nikki Amuka-Bird ). All of the travelers meet a mysterious traveler at the beach when they arrive in a rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan ( Aaron Pierre ). And why is he bleeding from his nose? And is that a dead body?

From their arrival, the beauty of this beach, surrounded by steep stone, feels threatening. The waves crash and the rock wall almost seems to grow taller as the day goes on. When they try to walk back the way they came, they get faint and wake up on the beach again. And then things get really weird when Trent and Maddox are suddenly significantly older, jumping about five years in a couple hours. The adults figure out that every half-hour on this beach is like a year off of it. As the kids age into Alex Wolff , Eliza Scanlen , and the great Thomasin McKenzie , the adults face their own physical issues, including hearing/vision problems, dementia, and that damn tumor in Prisca’s body. Can they get off the beach before 24 hours age them 48 years?

What a clever idea. Rod Serling would have loved it. And “Old” is very effective when Shyamalan is being playful and quick with his high concept. “Old” doesn’t really feel like a traditional mystery. I never once cared about “figuring out” what was happening to this crew, enjoying “Old” far more as surreal horror than as a thriller that demanded explanations. Having said that, it sometimes feels like Shyamalan and his team have to pull punches to hold that PG-13. I wondered about the truly gruesome, Cronenberg version of this story that doesn’t shy away from what happens to the human body over time and doesn’t feel a need to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’.

The actors all seem like they would have been willing to go on that more surreal journey. Most of the ensemble finds a way to push through a script that really uses them like a kid uses sand toys on a beach, moving them around before they wash away with the tide. Stand-outs include Sewell’s confused menace, McKenzie’s palpable fear (she nails that the best, by far, understanding she’s in a horror movie more than some of the others), and the grounded center provided by Bernal and Krieps.

A director who often veers right when he should arguably go left, Shyamalan and his collaborators manage their tone here better than he has in years. Yes, the dialogue is clunky and almost entirely expositional regarding their plight and attempts to escape it, but that’s a feature, not a bug. “Old” should have an exaggerated, surreal tone and Shyamalan mostly keeps that in place, assisted greatly by some of the best work yet by his regular cinematographer Mike Gioulakis . The pair are constantly playing with perception and forced POV, fluidly gliding their camera up and down the beach as if it’s rushing to catch up with all the developments as they happen. Some of the framing here is inspired, catching a corner of a character’s head before revealing they’re now being played by a new actor. It’s as visually vibrant a film as Shyamalan has made in years, at its best when it’s embracing its insanity. The waves are so loud and the rock wall is so imposing that they almost feel like characters.     

Sadly, the film crashes when it decides to offer some sane explanations and connect dots that didn’t really need to be connected. There’s a much stronger version of “Old” that ends more ambiguously, allowing viewers to leave the theatre playing around with themes instead of unpacking exactly what was going on. The conversation around Shyamalan often focuses on his final scenes, and I found the ones in “Old” some of his most frustrating given how they feel oppositional to what works best about the movie. When his characters are literally trying to escape the passage of time, as people do when their kids are growing up too fast or they receive a mortality diagnosis, “Old” is fascinating and entertaining. It’s just too bad that it doesn’t age into its potential.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Gael García Bernal as Guy
• Vicky Krieps as Prisca
• Rufus Sewell as Charles
• Alex Wolff as Trent Aged 15
• Nikki Amuka-Bird as Patricia
• Brett M. Reed

Writer (based on the graphic novel "Sandcastle" by)

• Frederick Peeters
• Pierre-Oscar Levy
• M. Night Shyamalan

Cinematographer

• Mike Gioulakis
• Trevor Gureckis

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Adapted from Sandcastle , the graphic novel by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest mystery-thriller, Old , is different from the films he’s written and directed in the past. The film is less focused on the traditional horror elements, which is refreshing, even as it shifts towards a message that is underdeveloped when considering the big twist. Old has its moments of intrigue, of bodily horror, and themes surrounding the passage of time, but it’s too often bogged down by its tedious mystery.   

Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) are planning to separate and bring their kids, Trent (Nolan River) and Maddox (Alexa Swinton), to the Anamika Resort for a last family vacation before everything in their life changes. When they and a few others — Jarin (Ken Leung), Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Charles (Rufus Sewell), and Chrystal (Abbey Lee) — are selected to visit a secluded beach for the day by the resort manager (Gustaf Hammersten), they quickly discover that time works differently there. Trapped with no hope of escape, the characters must figure out why they’ve been chosen and the reason they’re aging so rapidly.

Related:  Old Trailer Reveals M. Night Shyamalan's Supernatural Thriller

Shyamalan builds tension and suspense with close-ups of the body — faces, knees, shoulders, eyes — when the characters are working through heightened emotions and changes to their situations. The camera pans away at every physical transformation, spanning the length of the beach before settling back on its subjects. This is exciting in the sense that the outcome of the movement is a surprise to the audience, as well as another predicament for the characters. It’s also a bold choice to film all the unfolding action during the day; as the sun goes down, the looming darkness is used to reflect on the precious time lost, the life choices made, and the affection that still lingers between Prisca and Guy’s family despite everything. There’s a deep sense of wasted time on anger and enjoying the time one has, even if Old doesn’t always pull it off because it waits too long to get to that point with the characters. 

The dialogue is occasionally comical, especially when the characters are astonished by things they shouldn’t be — Prisca asks, in all seriousness, “Can you believe I found this place on the internet?” With so much of people’s time now spent online, where else would she have found the resort? However, the actors deliver their lines with such conviction, elevating the story and relationship dynamics that would have otherwise fallen flat. Old certainly nails the eerie, intense feelings that come with being trapped, of watching one’s life unfolding so quickly that it’s hard to think past the missed opportunities. As the characters grow older every half hour, the desperation and paranoia grows along with them, sometimes to dizzyingly intense degrees. That is where the thrills truly lie — how people can so quickly turn on each other because of things outside their control. The film’s sweet spot is right in the middle of its runtime, after the setup has been established, but before the reveal of what’s actually going on. This is where Shyamalan finds the balance between the story and its characters as he lingers on them and what this all means for their lives and the effects of their choices.

That said, the premise of the film is often more interesting than its execution. Aging is something society fears and avoids, with elderly abuse, age discrimination in the workforce, and the general negativity surrounding the loss of youth ever-present; the latter is on display with Chrystal, who values her youthful looks above all else. Conversely, for Trent and Maddox, what is it like to grow up too fast? When the mind of a six-year-old is suddenly a teenager with raging hormones, the impact on the body can be dangerous. To that end, Shyamalan is at least focused on the characters’ bodies, not in a creepy way, but in a fascinating, detailed close-up of its changes. Despite some of the good, Old doesn’t engage fully with the topics it sets up, including the aspect of the story introduced by the twist at the end, one that adds several more layers to the previous events. Typical of Shyamalan, the twist reframes the entirety of the film’s plot, but it’s one that will give pause regarding the exploitation of certain issues and how they’re perceived.

Sometimes, Old is bizarrely clinical despite its tension-building. When even the chills and thrills don’t work the way they should later on in the film, it leaves the audience waiting impatiently to get to the end for answers. There isn’t much time spent exploring the characters, with much of the quiet, reflective moments being relegated to the end. It doesn’t quite land an emotional punch because the plot is far more dedicated to maintaining the mystery, one that drags on unnecessarily and doesn’t provide much insight since it comes too late. The film’s primary message is tacked on at the end, with Shyamalan only dipping into the shallow end of the repercussions. So while Old is certainly a different kind of thriller, with plenty of elements that work to create a sense of tranquility and desperation in equal measure, it grows wearisome as it evades its deeper themes for the thrill of that final discovery.

Next:  How Old Is Different From M. Night Shyamalan's Other Movies

Old is releasing in theaters on the evening of Thursday, July 22. The film is 108 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for strong violence, disturbing images, suggestive content, partial nudity and brief strong language.

Based on the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, Old is a chilling, mysterious new thriller about a family on a tropical holiday who discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly - reducing their entire lives into a single day.

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‘Old’ Review: They Say Sun Can Age You, but This Is Ridiculous

A half-hour at the beach costs vacationers a year in this disquieting new horror puzzler, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

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By Glenn Kenny

In the opening pages of “Dino,” a 1992 biography of Dean Martin by Nick Tosches, the author cites a haunting Italian phrase: “La vecchiaia è carogna.” “Old age is carrion.”

When some vacationing families are deposited on a secluded beach recommended to them by a smarmy resort manager in “Old,” the new movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, we see a trio of vultures atop a tree take to the sky.

Not long after that, unusual things begin happening. The young children of Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, both superb, as is the entire cast) feel their bathing suits tightening. An epileptic psychologist (Nikki Amuka-Bird) unexpectedly finds herself without symptoms. The elderly mother of the trophy wife of a tetchy physician just up and dies. A moderately famous rap star (Aaron Pierre), who had come to the beach some hours before, wanders around befuddled, with an incurable nosebleed. The corpse of his female companion is discovered in the water, prompting the physician (Rufus Sewell) to accuse the rapper of murder.

In time — not too much time, because, as it happens, it is of the essence in this situation — the beachgoers figure out that they are aging at an accelerated rate. One half-hour equals about a year.

And the beach that is aging them won’t let them leave.

Some vacation. Shyamalan adapted his disquieting tale from the graphic novel “Sandcastle,” by the French writer Pierre Oscar Lévy and the Swiss illustrator Frederik Peeters. As is frequently the case with French-produced bandes dessinées, “Sandcastle” is a stark existentialist parable. (It is perhaps no coincidence that the book Krieps’s character attempts to read on the beach is a dual biography of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.) Shyamalan expands on the book in the way one would expect an American filmmaker to — among other things, eventually offering a sort-of explanation that the source material doesn’t.

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M. Night Shyamalan returns with Old, a floppy but haunting thriller about aging

It’s at its best when it’s at its weirdest.

by Alissa Wilkinson

Few things are more delightful than a movie with one big, silly concept that it runs right into the ground. Plot? Who needs it! Character development? Unnecessary. The ship is sinking and everyone needs to get off; huge man-eating ants or giant earth-shaking worms threaten humankind; the zombies are headed this way. Movies like this conjure a world in which everything is a little senseless and absurd. No matter who you are, you might live a long and fulfilling life, or you might get stomped on by a dinosaur. The human condition, in two hours.

Old, the latest thriller from the endlessly inventive — if not always successful — director M. Night Shyamalan, spends a lot of its runtime being this sort of movie. It spoils nothing to say it’s a movie where sudden and uncontrollable aging is the problem (just look at the title), and the characters are preoccupied with figuring out how to escape it.

That said, if you wish to avoid actual spoilers, bow out now.

The reason for the aging is not entirely clear — it seems to be caused by the beach Old ’s characters are vacationing on, or maybe a cliff that surrounds it? In any case, as aging comes for us all, so it comes, at an accelerated pace, for those who’ve arrived at this little cove just looking for a refreshing day near the water. There’s Guy (Gael García Bernal) and his wife Prisca (Vicky Krieps), whose marriage is on the rocks, and their two young children: 6-year-old Trent (Nolan River) and his 11-year-old sister Maddox (Alexa Swinton). Jarin (Ken Leung), a nurse, is also there, as is his psychiatrist wife Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird). Another family completes the group: a doctor (Rufus Sewell), his beautiful wife (Abbey Lee), her mother (Kathleen Chalfant), and 6-year-old Kara (Kylie Begley).

Everyone in the group is staying at a nearby resort, and they’ve been brought to the secluded beach by one of the resort employees. (Keeping with tradition , Shyamalan himself plays that role.) When they arrive on the beach, there’s only one other person there, sitting crouched and quiet near the giant cliff that looms above. Maddox, to her delight, recognizes him: He’s a rapper, and in perhaps the movie’s most delightful twist, his stage name is “Mid-Sized Sedan.” (He’s played by Aaron Pierre, who was devastating as Caesar in Amazon’s recent miniseries The Underground Railroad .)

They set up their coolers and chairs and sit a while, but then things start getting ... weird. Really weird. They find a body, to their horror. A small, benign tumor in Prisca’s abdomen starts growing. The doctor begins saying weird things. Wounds don’t act right. Leaving the beach seems impossible. The kids start springing into adolescence without warning. (They are played, at various ages, by Luca Faustino Rodriguez, Mikaya Fisher, Little Women ’s Eliza Scanlen, Hereditary ’s Alex Wolff, and Leave No Trace ’s Thomasin McKenzie.)

There’s a lot to like about Old , especially its slow, measured movement. The movie crafts a vast, sunny, sweaty landscape of dread. Shyamalan’s particular visual sense, which favors unexpected framings that produce interesting images, is on full display, even when it’s hampered by the fact that the characters are simply on a beach, with little to look at that isn’t in the background. For much of the movie, the characters have figured out what’s happening to them, even if they don’t know why, and the action is all in their attempts to escape either the island or the inevitable.

But it’s also the epitome of a “your mileage may vary” experience. Shyamalan has not grown any more skilled at writing dialogue over the years, and while stilted dialogue can work in some circumstances (in 2004’s The Village , it eventually made sense), it doesn’t pay off here. It’s not Old ’s constant exposition that’s the problem so much as the unending, clunky over-explanation. Do kids really need to be told what their parent means when they shout “Run! Hide!”?

That screenplay (or perhaps some bad direction) seems to tie the hands of Old ’s very fine cast behind their backs. In the film’s best moments, though, I found myself thinking of Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film The Exterminating Angel , in which a group of wealthy people find themselves trapped in a drawing room, mysteriously unable to escape as their psyches, relationships, and veneer of civilization slowly disintegrate. That film is baldly allegorical and obviously satirical, surreal in ways that are haunting even after it’s over. Its refusal to really explain what’s going on is unsettling.

In its last act and the coda that follows, Old becomes more sentimental, more of a family drama than the film seemed to be at the start — and then, all of a sudden, it turns into something like science fiction. The change-up is not exactly a twist, but in an M. Night Shyamalan film, it’s not unexpected. You know going in that there’s going to be more to the story, that you’ll eventually find out what’s going on with the ... oldness. That’s why the film’s trailer shows so much of its hand; it knows audiences will be intrigued by whatever is actually happening. This guy directed The Sixth Sense , after all. There’s got to be an explanation.

There is, indeed, an explanation — but I kind of wish there wasn’t. For most of Old , the sheer weirdness of the setup is what’s so compelling. The movie is loosely based on the graphic novel Sandcastle , by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, which has quite a different ending than the film and one that, for my money, is more satisfying.

While the logic Old provides makes sense, I can imagine a better movie that ends 20 minutes earlier and gives fewer answers, leaving us with more of the unnerving, wistful sadness that always comes along with stories about aging and mortality. I think of movies like She Dies Tomorrow , which don’t bother to offer explanations and thus, I’d argue, better mimic what they’re trying to evoke: the absurdity and tragedy of life.

In making a plot pivot and then meticulously explaining itself, Old is peak Shyamalan — a little sentimental, a little surprising, a little labored. When compared to his recent movies like Glass and Split , it’s still eerily spare, a mode that suits him well. And the moments when Old is cranking into high-concept gear are fun to watch and disquieting.

Being old is not, in itself, any worse or better than being young. Yet the feeling that time is slipping away, that the sand in the hourglass is falling fast, will induce existential angst in the best of us. When one of Old ’s characters laments, at one point, that it’s simply not fair that they’ve missed so many milestones in life because of this beach, they’re not wrong. Frankly, after the pandemic year we’ve just been through — and given the looming uncertainty of the future — who can’t relate?

So at its best points, Old taps into something primal. Isn’t life ultimately a high-concept horror movie, in which the concept is we’re all going to die?

Old is currently in theaters.

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‘Old’ Review: M. Night Shyamalan Turns a Day at the Beach Into a Nightmare of Aging. But Are His Gimmicks Getting Old?

It's a good premise, but the director doesn't explore it so much as he throws ideas against the wall.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Everyone likes to talk about the big twist at the end of an M. Night Shyamalan movie: Was it good for you? Did you see it coming? Did it turn the rest of the movie into nonsense? (In some Shyamalan films, no twist is required to do that.) Yet for all the attention paid to Shyamalan’s trademark teasing grand finales, it’s the little twists in his movies — the ones that happen along the way  — that can determine whether the film in question is spinning a yarn worth telling or just spinning its wheels.

In “ Old ,” Shyamalan’s latest is-it-clever-or-just-dumb-or-is-it-both? slow-burn creepshow, there’s a moment you either get past or you don’t. Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca ( Vicky Krieps ) are on vacation at a ritzy tropical-island resort along with their two children, 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and 6-year-old Trent (Nolan River). There’s a bit of drama the kids don’t know about; their folks are on the verge of splitting up, and Prisca has had a health scare. Nevertheless, the couple is putting on a good face, and they embrace an offer made by the unctuous Euro resort manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) to take a day trip to a special beach hidden behind a spectacular rocky cliff on the other side of the island. (The van driver is played by Shyamalan, who is now 50. For what it’s worth, he looks remarkably young.)

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On the beach, they’re joined by a handful of the hotel’s other guests, and that’s when bizarre things start to happen. The body of a nude swimmer shows up dead in the water. Anyone who stands in the adjacent canyon blacks out. Oh, and the two children suddenly look a lot older — they’re now 16 and 11.

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What’s going on? The beach possesses a mysterious quality that ages anyone who’s on it. Every half an hour, you get one year older. It’s most noticeable with the children, but after a while mention is made of the small tumor that was detected in Prisca’s abdomen. It was three centimeters; now it’s the size of a golf ball — and then, minutes later, the size of a grapefruit. (It’s growing as quickly as she ages.) So what happens? Charles (Rufus Sewell), an eccentrically intense and jabbering physician, decides to operate — right there on the beach, without anesthesia. (It turns out that an incision will heal instantly.) Boom! — the tumor is out, just like that. But since the audience is still absorbing the premise of the movie — that just about everyone on the beach will be heading toward the grave within 24 hours — the fact that this impromptu surgery just sort of… happens , because Shyamalan thought it would be a cool idea, may stick in your moviegoing craw. It’s a twist more fanciful than logical, but Shyamalan doesn’t seem to care. He’s holding your attention!

“Old,” like most Shyamalan movies, has a catchy hook along with some elegant filmmaking gambits. But instead of developing his premise in an insidious and powerful way, the writer-director just keeps throwing things at you. That nude swimmer was the paramour of a famous rapper named Mid-Size Sedan (Aaron Pierre), who Charles the surgeon wastes no time accusing of murder. The movie cues us to think that’s a racist idea, yet isn’t above exploiting it for suspense. And why is the rapper’s nose bleeding? Charles and his high-maintenance wife, Chrystal (Abbey Lee), have an 11-year-old daughter of their own, Kara (Mikaya Fisher), and before long she and Trent, who are now teenagers, have hooked up, and she has gotten pregnant. And where are Guy and Prisca in all this? Bizarrely, they don’t look any older. Reference is made to wrinkles, and after a while we glimpse a few, but basically these two — and the other adults — just kind of remain the people they were, which seems extremely odd in a movie that is otherwise about such dramatic developments.

When you nitpick a thriller, you can sound like one of those people who Hitchcock referred to, with weary futility, as “the plausibles” (as if plausibility were the only thing that mattered to them). But “Old,” even once you accept where it’s going, lacks shape and consistency. It has a compelling off-kilter visual style, with the camera hinting at things just out of sight, but the characters keep explaining who they are in cliché psychotherapeutic soundbites; at times, the film threatens to turn into the “Twilight Zone” version of a 12-step meeting. The characters are trapped on that beach, and Shyamalan creates a convincing claustrophobia, but part of it is that you wish most of them were better company.

The real trouble with the movie is that its rules are so arbitrary. A corpse decays to bone in half an hour. The adults all age by barely visible increments. Each family, tellingly, has a malady ­— but some are physical, some mental. (Charles the surgeon is a head case who keeps wondering, for some godforsaken reason, which movie costarred Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando. It was “The Missouri Breaks,” for anyone playing movie “Jeopardy.”) One character ends up with a mass of contorted limbs like something out of a demonic-possession film. Another scales the vertical rock face to escape, then fatally falls asleep during the climb. A few of these issues come into focus with the big twist, which for a moment makes villainous characters look weirdly benign, then villainous again. More than ever, though, the twist in a Shyamalan film makes one ask: Was it worth sitting through the entire movie for this ? Or is that feeling getting old?

Reviewed at Crosby St. Screening Room, New York, July 21, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 108 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Blinding Edge Pictures production. Producers: M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock. Executive producer: Steven Schneider.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan. Camera: Mike Gioulakis. Editor: Brett M. Reed. Music: Trevor Gureckis.
• With: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Eliza Scanlen, Kathleen Chalfant, Gustaf Hammarsten, Thomasin McKenzie, Embeth Davidtz.

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Old Reviews

Shyamalan’s efforts to stretch this into 108 minutes leaves far too many dull lapses.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Aug 10, 2023

A HORRIFYING Concept that will have you leaving the theater contemplating your life & the time you spend in it!

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Old is one of those cases of a remarkably unique, intriguing concept failing to reach its potential due to an overall disappointing execution of too many ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 25, 2023

Questionable conclusions aside, you still can’t deny the beautiful simplicity of Old’s concept or the cast’s stellar performances throughout the feature.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2023

...Old fails to live up to its potential because of its half-baked, poorly written characters

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

That pitch and pace unfortunately does the ensemble cast no favors, all of them struggling mightily to deliver some of the clunkiest dialogue of Shyamalan’s career.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2023

Though Old has a number of observable shortcomings, my overall impression of the film that sticks with me is that of excitement and amusement.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | May 2, 2023

Shymalan’s latest is compellingly perverse and wracked with a real sense of menace, making its hopeful denouement something of a betrayal.

Full Review | Mar 13, 2023

Quite beautiful and very stupid.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Oct 12, 2022

“Old” sees Shyamalan once again blending the supernatural with the real world to make something that’s uniquely his own. Not everyone will be onboard, but I was.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 17, 2022

Add Old to the unrealised potential column of M Night Shyamalan's filmography.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 8, 2022

The director’s latest reconfirms my original sentiments that M. Night Shyamalan is a one-trick pony who isn’t the most exciting filmmaker.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 10, 2022

"Old" is wildly inconsistent, preventing it from ever being genuinely as good as some of the director's better works such as "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable," or "Split."

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 20, 2022

Old's breakneck pacing once things start going south leaves little room to delve into character and personal relationships, or feature enough quieter flashes that would have helped to create sympathy for these people we've not long met.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 26, 2022

iOldi represents the sort of solid mid-range thriller that use to litter the multiplexes 25 years ago.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 13, 2022

Try as it might, Old doesnt live up to its trailer, nor does it stand tall against some of Shyamalans other films.

Full Review | Feb 26, 2022

What is clear, however, is that Old is nowhere near the project many were hoping it would be and will leave many audience members and long-time Shyamalan fans shaking their heads.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2022

Shyamalan remains more invested in setting the hook than reeling in his audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

While far from a masterpiece, Old is an entertaining thought exercise from one of Hollywoods most invigorating filmmakers.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 12, 2022

Old delivers on its buildup of tension, although it struggles to engage on a dramatic level.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 12, 2022

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M. night shyamalan’s ‘old’: film review.

Starring Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, the filmmaker's latest contrasts a lush tropical destination with a baffling disease of the flesh.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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Landing somewhere between The Happening and The Village on the Shyamalanometer of Narrative Gimmickry, M. Night Shyamalan ’s Old places a dozen or so travelers together on a remote beach, then watches them live the rest of their lives in a day. Facing a strange phenomenon that greatly accelerates the aging process, strangers must collaborate in search of escape even as time worsens their deficiencies and the director strains (with ostentatious camera movement and some stunning scenery) to keep things from feeling like a Twilight Zone morality play.

Viewers who can take it at face value may find a chill or two here, but ultimately Old can’t escape the goofiness of its premise long enough to put its more poetic possibilities across successfully.

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Release date: Friday, July 23

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abbey Lee, Aaron Pierre, Kathleen Chalfant, Alexa Swinton, Nolan River, Kylie Begley, Embeth Davidtz, Eliza Scanlen, Alex Wolff, Emun Elliott, Thomasin McKenzie

Director-screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan

Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps play Guy and Prisca, parents who want to take their kids Trent and Maddox (Nolan River and Alexa Swinton) on a nice vacation before breaking the news that they’re going to separate. Their strife is no secret, though: Mom and Dad struggle to relax and enjoy a moment, even in a tropical paradise where cocktails are tailor-made to their tastes.

Seeming to intuit their needs, the resort manager quietly confides that he has an especially beautiful, secluded spot he only recommends to guests he really likes. So what if he also sends a few other guests to the same spot, and if the driver who takes them there (Shyamalan) can’t wait to get back in the van and hustle away from the site? Soon our heroes and a couple of other parties are settled in on a pristine stretch of sand with crashing surf at their feet and a vast wall of craggy rock rising up behind them. Then they find the corpse.

The dead woman was a friend of a famous rapper (Aaron Pierre) who was already on the beach when these guys arrived. A doctor ( Rufus Sewell ) is pretty quick to accuse the Black man of foul play, and Guy (along with a level-headed nurse played by Ken Leung) has trouble keeping their confrontation from getting out of hand. By the time things are nearly calm, the kids are five years older. And whenever someone tries to run back to the road to get help, he becomes disoriented in the passageway through the rock and winds up passed out, back on the beach.

In the kind of scene familiar to viewers of genre pictures, Old desperately has one character guess what’s going on in the hopes the audience will buy it and play along: Surely, Leung’s nurse deduces, there’s some strange deposit of minerals in the massive rock wall that somehow affects the speed of cellular growth in our bodies. Based on how quickly the kids (and the doctor’s daughter) are developing, we appear to be aging two years for every hour we’re here. If we don’t get off this beach, most of us will die of old age by tomorrow morning!

Or sooner. Several vacationers have conditions that, once sped up, present sometimes-disturbing threats to themselves or others. Anxieties are predictably high, and a capable cast handles the scenario’s weirdness as well as they can. Special credit goes to Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie, who step in to play Trent and Maddox as teens and therefore have the additional burden of imagining what it’s like to leap from prepubescence to young adulthood in a matter of minutes.

Long before he gets to his trademark twisty ending (not a bad one, this time), Shyamalan uses his sci-fi premise to deliver some predictable ironies. Any viewer will guess how rapid aging will treat the doctor’s stick-thin trophy wife (Abbey Lee). But those familiar with the director’s beloved Philadelphia and its engrossing Mütter Museum of medical oddities may resent a plot point that museum surely inspired: Without giving anything away, a heartbreaking exhibit there tells a true story of deformity that is transformed into a grotesque cartoon here — a sight gag that may be the last straw for viewers struggling to take the sometimes clunky screenplay seriously.

Rod Serling-like ironies aside, the movie does finally deliver satisfying answers to a question or two we’d given up hope of answering. But doing so requires a return to a familiar genre mode after a tranquil sequence where things might’ve ended, almost happily, in a very different mood. We’re all stuck together on a rock, aging too quickly, coping with irrational neighbors. Maybe we should just watch the waves and enjoy the company of loved ones for as long as we have left?

Full credits

Production company: Blinding Edge Pictures Distributor: Universal Pictures Cast: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abbey Lee, Aaron Pierre, Kathleen Chalfant, Alexa Swinton, Nolan River, Kylie Begley, Embeth Davidtz, Eliza Scanlen, Alex Wolff, Emun Elliott, Thomasin McKenzie Director-Screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan Producers: M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock Executive Producer: Steven Schneider Director of photography: Mike Gioulakis Production designer: Naaman Marshall Costume designer: Caroline Duncan Editor: Brett M. Reed Composer: Trevor Gureckis Casting director: Douglas Aibel

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