M. Night Shayamalan's newest film is "Old," and like many of the filmmaker's movies, it
has a predictably unpredictable twist ending. Here's a breakdown of everything you need
to know about what happens in the final moments of "Old."
Throughout "Old" and its brisk 108 minute runtime, the viewer is repeatedly bombarded
with new wrinkles within the film's central conflict. Beneath all the intrigue lies a
ticking clock as the cast of characters' time left to live runs out.
When the beach excursion begins, there are eleven characters with their toes in the sand.
There's insurance actuary Guy, his wife Prisca, and their kids Maddox and Trent, each played
by a trio of performers as they rapidly age over the course of the day.
They're joined by the doctor Charles, his wife Chrystal, his mother Agnes, and their
daughter Kara. There's also the rapper, Mid-Size Sedan, who was on the beach when they arrived,
and nurse Jarin alongside his wife Patricia, a psychologist.
It's a cast the perfect size for a classic whodunit, except in this case the mystery
is very supernatural, hurdling each character towards certain death if they can't make it
off the beach.
As they try to escape the beach, every potential exit proves untenable. Trying to swim against
the current kills Jarin, climbing the cliffside and falling fells an adult-aged Kara, everyone
who tries to traverse the caverns surrounding the beach blacks out — the surviving inhabitants
each succumb to the hardships of aging in their own respective ways, while accepting
their fate and trying to enjoy the present with their remaining loved ones.
Guy and Prisca, on the verge of divorce when the film begins due to infidelity and a benign
tumor causing the duo to doubt their future together, have no choice but to forget the
troubles of the life they led before arriving in this peculiar nexus. Guy slowly loses his
vision and Prisca, her hearing, but the two work together to fend off the violent threat
of Charles — the doctor hiding a burgeoning schizophrenia that consumes him as the beach
ages his mind by years in hours.
Nearly adult-aged Maddox and Trent must hide from Christal, who has similarly lost her
mind and is trying to kill them by heaving rocks from afar. The core family spends one
final moonlit moment together, enjoying the peace and tranquility they initially sought
this vacation for. Guy and Prisca die within moments of one another, mimicking a sped up
version of how often elderly couples die within months of each other.
When the sun rises the next morning, Maddox and Trent, who began this journey aged 11
and 6, find themselves in middle age, positive they will die but choosing to give escape
one last chance. But not before building a sandcastle together, for old times' sake.
In the ensuing play date, Trent remembers the code-breaking game he played with Idlib,
a child they met at the resort the day before. Idlib seemed to know more about this strange
location than he was able to let on, but when Trent decodes the final letter he got before
they came to the beach, it reveals a portentous message about the potentially protective powers
of the nearby coral.
This convinces Maddox and Trent that swimming through the coral may protect them long enough
to get away from the beach and whatever mysterious energies have been hounding them.
But when they try to make this underwater trek, Maddox gets her swimsuit caught and
the two appear to drown, the final members of this trip extinguished for good.
It is at this point that the film pulls back to reveal the murky figure that has been observing
the beach this entire time, only seen in glimpses from afar.
It's the hotel van driver who dropped them all off in the first place, played by M. Night
Shyamalan himself. But he's no simple hotel employee. Based on the interactions he has
over his phone, he is one of the resort's many researchers, and everything we have seen
unfold is just part of a larger experiment. The 73rd in a series, it would seem.
The Resort Manager is actually in charge of this facility, which was erected to understand
the natural anomaly of the beach and figure out how to use its mystical properties for
the betterment of mankind. Every member of the cast was chosen because of a specific
ailment they suffered from, whether it be Prisca's tumor or Charles' schizophrenia,
so that they could have experimental new drugs tested on them. Because of the time acceleration,
medical trials that typically take years can unfold over the course of hours. The data
gathered from this protracted slaughter will help save thousands of lives.
Or at least, that is how everyone involved justifies the work they do. Some of the scientists
object to the specifics of the procedure, but the Manager implies that it's unlikely
they'll be changing their methods anytime soon.
It's not like anyone has survived to complain. Or have they?
Earlier in the film, Trent — when he was still a child — would walk up to every new
adult character and ask them their name and occupation. It seemed like an easy way for
Shyamalan to help audiences keep track of the numerous side players in "Old," but it
was also seeding for the film's final twist.
As a brand new crop of patients arrives at the resort, we see a fellow visitor from the
film's opening relaxing on the patio and hear a familiar voice ask if he's a cop. We then
remember Trent meeting this man the day before, and realize the voice is adult Trent who,
alongside Maddox, survived the coral and is now passing along a diary a previous beach
inhabitant kept, listing everyone that died from their trial, their full names and home
addresses.
The cop calls home to look up some of the names, discovering that every single one of
them is a missing persons case. At the same time, Trent and Maddox interrupt the new resort
inhabitants from having their welcome cocktails, the delivery system used to pump them full
of the experimental drugs, and begin to tell their stories to the remaining tenants, many
of whom have their smartphones out recording their story.
We see the survivors being helicoptered out of the island, as it is explained that the
entire operation is being shuttered and everyone involved will be brought to justice. But Trent
and Maddox must now go meet their aunt, their only remaining relative, who is now a few
years their junior.
The film leaves the audience pondering a number of unresolved questions, but the one that
matters the most, perhaps, is whether this experiment coming to an end is truly for the
greater good or not. It's an ending worth debating — so long as you can wrap your
head around it first, anyway.
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