A family on a tropical holiday discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly in Old , a new thriller from M. Night Shyamalan.
Director M. Night Shyamalan has a well-known fondness for his signature surprise twist endings. When those twists work organically, we get classics like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable . When they don”t—well, if you’re lucky, you get something like his new film, Old , in which everything that comes before is sufficiently compelling that will you can almost shake off a jarring final twist of which feels so forced, it’s almost like it belongs in an entirely different movie.
(This being an Meters. Night Shyamalan film where surprise twists are tantamount, I have taken great pains to avoid spoilers. There is nothing discussed in the review below that has not already been revealed in the film’s trailers. )
Old will be based on a French graphic novel called Sandcastle , written by Pierre Oscar Levy (also a documentary filmmaker) and illustrated by Frederik Peeters. It’s about a group of 13 people who find themselves trapped on a mysterious, secluded beach where time moves much more quickly—so quickly that young children reach puberty in a matter of hours, and everyone will reach old age plus die within 24 hours. Shyamalan received a copy of the particular book as a Father’s Day gift, and was immediately touched by how it humanely grappled with the all-too-human fear of aging in addition to the relentless passage of time.
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