An odd film, Old.

Seriously, 2019’s Old is so odd that I feel the need to point out repeatedly just how strange it is.  As I watched the film, I respected it’s dedication to being odd but, at the same time, I was a bit surprised that it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan.  For all of the fame that he’s gained for his twist endings and his suspenseful films, Shyamalan has always aspired to being a member of the Hollywood mainstream.  As such, his films are usually twisty without being transgressive.  He’s usually careful about alienating the audience.

But then, he makes something like Old, which features a group of people going to the beach and aging a year every 30 minutes.  This group includes middle-aged people (and wow, are they ever in trouble) but it also includes young children who quickly become teenager and then quickly become adults and, by the end of the film, are middle-aged and walking around in ill-fitting swim suits.  Along the way, there’s a 10-minute pregnancy, a baby that only lives for a few seconds because it’s aging too quickly, and a blood infection that kills within seconds.  Eyesight and hearing fades.  Bones snap.  Bodies quickly decay.  Aging sucks.

It’s not a happy film at all.  Yes, the movie does end with a minor victory but it still leaves the remaining characters in a sort of mental and emotional limbo, the type that you know they’re never going to escape.  The majority of the characters die and often, they die graphically and painfully.  Under normal circumstances, they would have died over the course of several years and, at the very least, people would have time to grieve in between.  On the cursed beach of Old, people die one after the other and there’s no time to grieve.  Two character do manage to make some sort of peace with themselves before they age to death but the majority of the characters go out railing against that dark night.  One of the most disturbing things about the film is that the characters have no control over what is happening to them.  Even when they try to leave the beach, they pass out and reawaken on the sand, a few years older.  I guess it’s like life.  There is no escape and there’s no way to prevent getting older.  Some will age well and live a full life.  Others will randomly get sick and die and, in the end, there’s no way to control which will be which.

Seriously, that’s depressing!  I’m not used to M. Night Shyamalan being that depressing!  But then I discovered that this movie was based on a French-language graphic novel and it all made sense.

The people on the beach are played by a talented group of actors, with several different performers playing the rapidly aging children over the course of the film.  Rufus Sewell gives a good performance as a surgeon who cracks under the pressure.  I was happy to see one of my favorite actors, Ken Leung, on the beach but I wasn’t particularly happy with what happened to his character.

It’s a strange film.  Say what you will about Shyamalan and his career has definitely been uneven, he can still deliver when he has the right material.