The new M Night Shyamalan film, Old, finally hit theatres around the globe this week, and
it's pretty bonkers.
There's a lot to unpack surrounding the plot, the ending,
the twists, and I'm going to be explaining it all in the aim to help you guys gather
a greater sense of what happened.
This analysis will also contain spoilers, so if you do happen to be someone who hasn't
seen the film yet, then I would recommend watching this video after you've seen it.
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But without further ado, let's dive into M Night Shyamalan's Old explained.
So unlike some of the director's previous films, which hinge on a last-minute twist
making you reassess everything you've just seen, Old is surprisingly upfront about its
premise.
Based on Sandcastle, the 2010 graphic novel, the movie follows two families, a middle-aged
couple and a young man, who find themselves trapped on a secluded beach
that's causing them to age so rapidly, it threatens to reduce their whole lives to a
single day.
While Shyamalan's more mysterious movies tend to set up, or at least hint at the reason,
before letting their oblivious audiences in on exactly what's been going on, Old does
the reverse.
It leaves you guessing until its final act, and even then it refuses to give you all of
the answers.
But before I can explain the ending, we need to break down the rest of the plot to fully
understand some of the implications.
Old follows risk analyst Guy and museum curator Prisca Capa, a married couple trying their
best to keep their impending separation a secret from their two children, which
includes 6-year-old Trent and preteen Maddox.
They do plan on telling them eventually, with Prisca revealing that she has already met
someone else and sorted out a new place for herself outside of the family home, but they
just want to give their kids one last memory-filled vacation first.
And hell, the trip does turn out to be one they will never forget, but not at all in
the way their parents had intended.
Shortly after arriving at their tropical holiday resort, the mature Trent befriends another
boy named Idlib, who seems to live at the hotel and is often seen being bossed about
by its manager Nils.
When they aren't together, they spend their time solving coded messages they've written
to one another as it makes them feel like spies and the fact that they do this will
prove important, and convenient, later on.
During breakfast, the Capas are approached by Nils and asked whether they'd be interested
in a visit to a nearby cove.
They of course say yes and he agrees to make arrangements, resulting in them getting on
a bus waiting to be ferried away.
Before they set off, another clan hops onboard which includes doctor Charles, his younger
and glamourous wife Chrystal, their 6-year-old Kara, and Charles' mother Agnes.
Having been driven to the bay by an unnamed van driver, which is a cameo role by M Night
Shyamalan himself, the gang pass through an imposing cavern, emerge onto a sandy shore
and become anxious when they spot a young man sitting silently by the rock face.
They settle down on the shore, but the calm quickly turns into chaos when Trent stumbles
across a dead woman and a frantic Charles suggests that the man, who Maddox points out
is actually a famous rapper called Mid-Sized Sedan, had actually killed her.
But after another couple which includes nurse Jarin and seizure-prone therapist Patricia,
turn up, the adults come to the horrifying realisation that the children have grown significantly
while they've been debating over the found body.
Trent and Kara are now preteens, while Maddox is a teenager.
During this, Agnes has also developed serious breathing problems, and the dead body decomposes.
Prisca, using knowledge she's gained from work, deduces that time is passing more quickly
on this beach and that none of them will last longer than 24 hours, so they best try to
find a way off of the shore.
But there's just one problem, because every time any of them try to pass back through
the cavern and get away, they get splitting headaches and find themselves back at the
sure in the company of everyone there.
So they are trapped and hysteria starts to set in and tensions rise, with Charles, succumbing
to his advancing schizophrenia and starting to physically lash out at the other holidaymakers.
Elsewhere, the kids have another growth spurt, with Trent, Maddox and Kara, now appearing
to grow extremely quickly.
Chrystal starts obsessing over her appearance, while Guy notices he's losing his eyesight
and Prisca undergoes an emergency surgery due to the tumour she was recently diagnosed
with, which grows larger, almost in an instant.
And to make things even weirder, Trent and Kara sleep together, confused by their sudden
rush of hormones, resulting in Kara becoming pregnant and giving
birth just minutes after doing the deed.
But it's at this point where a number of deaths follow, and the race of time becomes
so accelerated that our characters and the audience can barely keep up.
This includes the newborn baby, Kevin... who is stabbed repeatedly by Charles, Jarin...
who tries to swim around the rocks but drowns in the process, Kara... having attempted to
climb up the cliffs, only to blackout and fall to the ground, and Patricia... from a
particularly extreme fit.
But Old soon grows fully into body horror, when at nightfall, Trent and Maddox discover
a hunchbacked Chrystal hiding in a cave.
Petrified by the thought of them seeing her aged self, she tries to drop a boulder on
her head but misses and breaks her arm.
With time moving much faster than usual, her broken bones meld back together in the wrong
place, and as she throws herself against the walls off a narrow tunnel, hobbling towards
the siblings, the same thing happens to her other limbs, causing her to eventually pass
away from the injuries.
And this all culminates with the final deaths of the film before we start to get those well-needed
answers.
Charles attacks Guy in his confused state and realising that he can now barely see,
Prisca, throws herself in between the two men before grabbing a rusty knife in the sand
and slashing Charles on the arm.
She notes how the infection from the wound should ravage his body right away and we see
this happen.
As his skin blisters, he falls to the ground in pain and eventually dies.
So much for him finding out what that film was starring Jack Nicholson
and Marlon Brando.
If you noticed, Charles continues to ask this question throughout the film, between his
intermittent violent outbursts that see him mistake people for those who may wish to have
him struck off from the medical profession.
As a result, asking about the film is an example of his deteriorating mental state, as his
mental health issues are accelerated through time on the beach.
While he struggles throughout the movie and is often seen standing alone speaking to himself,
no one pays him much notice, until he becomes violent and unmanageable.
He is seen talking to his dead mother at one point, speaking of how his job overwhelmed
him and he became overtired, suggesting he may have experienced a breakdown.
But the film with Brando and Nicholson being referenced is
actually called, The Missouri Breaks, and is 1976 Western about a rustler, Jack Nicholson,
who falls on hard times due to a land baron making his job difficult.
The baron brings in a regulator, Marlon Brando, to hunt down the rustling gang and get rid
of them from his land.
So you can see the small references to his character and it's
one that is mainly used to symbolise the deteriorating state of Charles and the struggles he goes
through.
But of course, this was at a more accelerated progression.
But after Charles bites the dust and the dawn approaches, the Capas cuddle together as Guy
leans into a near-deaf Prisca and asks, "Were we fighting?".
She nods and smiles in response, which prompts him to joke about how he can't remember why
and how glad he is that they're all together.
He falls backwards and passes on, before Prisca walks towards the seafront and dies
herself.
It seems worth noting here that, in the source material, all of the people perish after seeing
the hotelier's son José get gunned down while running towards
them, and later falling asleep that first evening.
Before they die in the original graphic novel though, one of the strangers tells the others
the story of a King who was so afraid of death, he spent years trying to avoid it, only to
realise that his fear had consumed him so much he'd essentially let his life pass him
by anyway.
Old does go into these themes within this scene, but it's evident that M Night Shyamalan
is more concerned about the twists and involving using characters to represent moral ideas.
I did like a lot of this stuff and I found surprisingly impactful at times, but more
individual character growth and focus on their progression in the story may
have helped other scenes that just felt way too weird.
But following the death of their parents, the following morning, Maddox and Trent, who
have now grown up, even more, realise that they haven't got much time left, and vow to
keep searching for a way out until they physically cannot.
Before trying, they mutually decide to make a sandcastle together first, a reference to
the graphic novel of the same name, and while they're sculpting away
on the seafront, Trent reveals that he hasn't had a chance to check out the last cryptic
message that Idlib gave him.
"Decode it," Maddox encourages him as he runs off to fetch the piece of paper from his bag.
A few minutes later, he returns to his sister to read out the note.
It is decoded saying, "My uncle doesn't like the coral", which to them is acknowledging
a nearby reef.
Deducing that Idlib was trying to give them a clue about how to escape the beach, Trent
suggests that they swim out to the patch of coral and see whether there's anything unusual
about it.
Maddox agrees and the pair head into the water with the movie finally revealing who has been
watching them.
Throughout the film, we see lights and reflections, miles away from the cove, and as it cuts to
a guy peering at them through a telescope from the cliff's edge, we pull back to reveal
M Night Shyamalan's van driver.
Satisfied they've drowned after seeing them submerge themselves and swim into the coral
but never resurface, he rings someone and explains that the last remaining subjects
have died.
The receiver of the call seemingly resists his claims at first, but after he reminds
them that the last person who made it out died shortly after anyway, they tell him to
pack up and return to the retreat.
Unknown to the lookout, however, Trent and Maddox did manage to survive through the coral,
almost running out of breath due to a tense, underwater swim.
They did so by getting air from within the holes of coral, and it results
in them swimming out and on their way back.
And then we come to the ending with some of the reveals we wanted.
In develops with hotel manager Nils walking down into an underground facility, and asking
one of the lab coat-wearing technicians there how the experiment went.
Visibly restraining himself, the excited worker informs the room that it was a triumph and
that they have successfully learned how to treat people with severe epilepsy.
It turns out that Patricia went the longest she'd ever gone without having a seizure on
the beach before she was struck down by that fatal one.
And well, that is essentially the reveal.
The hotel is a front and the people that work there are selecting unwitting tourists with
existing health issues, subjecting them to research trials, and relishing the fact that
they don't have to wait months or years to see whether their work generates positive
or sometimes negative results.
The drinks that were presented to them upon check-in were laced with personalised medicines
for this.
It's a pretty mixed ending compared to say The Sixth Sense's mind-blowing "I see dead
people" or that moment in The Village when you find out that the nightmarish creatures
scurrying about in the woods aren't real, but M Night Shyamalan noted that this is what
he set out to do.
He said in an interview that "he decided on the minor note, and how to end on a minor
note".
I can understand what he tried to do and personally really enjoyed the film overall, but it's
definitely an ending which is going to result in a mixed response from
the audience.
I think if some of the characters and their progression in the story was more-emotion
filled, then this minor note ending may have been more impactful in its
reveals.
But for what it's worth, it did feel somewhat fitting to the themes of the story on display.
But Old ends with Trent and Maddox alerting the authorities to what Nils and co have been
up to, with their crazy accounts backed up by previous victims' journals that they'd
found half-buried in the sand at the beginning, with many filled with names of people who
had previously been declared missing.
Later, Nils and his cohorts are escorted off the premises by police.
The film doesn't worry itself trying to apply logic to a place where time passes scarily
fast and while that might frustrate some, including myself, perhaps it's for the best?
Because for all its far-fetched moments, that might've been a step too far.
I don't know what you guys think but it's a
strange element to review when its very nature is confounded in weirdness.
Maybe like Shyamalan was suggesting, that is part of the mystery.
But that was my video explaining the plot, the ending and twists for M Night Shyamalan's
Old.
Overall, I found the film to be quite entertaining with brilliant
cinematography and sound design.
The production really helped to elevate the strangeness and mystery of the events that
happen, and while it wasn't completely groundbreaking it did leave me positive over how Shyamalan
has crafted a unique film on such a small budget.
He's done this time and time again and it's something that should be praised.
And strangely, the idea itself is pretty groundbreaking, it was just that the story points and character
arcs could have been elevated with slightly better writing and more compelling performances.
It's a mixed bag and it's one that I would definitely recommend watching, with it being
a film that I myself will check out again to try and notice the smaller details.
The themes are interesting and it relates to all of us as human beings fighting time
along with cinema itself manipulating time through the camera.
I'm giving Old a rating of 7 out of 10.
I hope this did help some of you guys understand the events a bit better and I'm looking forward
to hearing what else you picked out alongside your thoughts on the film, so don't forget
to let me know down below in the comments section.
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But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it, I've been Cortex and as always make some noise.