🎬 Introduction
Old is a psychological thriller released in 2021, which was written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, notable for The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Split. Shyamalan’s works are filled with intriguing plot twists. Old is a film that deeply analyzes time, aging, and mortality while simultaneously exploring the profound human emotions that arise regarding them. It is based on the graphic novel, Sandcastle, written by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters.
The film is set on an eerie beach where people age rapidly; the parents physically transform while going through years of parenting within a day and ask themselves, what if living in a day was actually a life’s timeline? Old uses this perplexing concept to convey the significance of family bonds alongside the anxiety of life not being lived to its full potential.
📖 Plot Summary
The story initiates with a married couple, Guy and Prisca Cappa, who are on a verge of splitting. They try to salvage their wedding by taking their two kids, Trent and Maddox, to an Island vacation. They are offered a trip to a secluded beach by the resort manager, who insists it’s a hidden gem known only to select guests.
Joining them are other guests that include: a surgeon Charles with his much younger wife Chrystal, his daughter Kara, his elderly mother Agnes, a nurse Jarin with his wife Patricia suffering from seizures, and a rapper Mid-Sized Sedan who seems socially withdrawn and overly secretive. For the primary highlights, the beach does seem idyllic with the water being crystal clear, the sand white, and cliffs are impossible to miss.
However, the strangeness is bound to occur at any minute. While the adults appear to be actually paying attention to smarter things, children, on the other hand, aged into teenagers in a matter of few hours. Medical changes take place almost instantaneously. The conditions that were previously stable degenerates at warp speed while the skeletons of guests begin rotting at a much higher rate than what is normal. With all of the clues lying around, it can be inferred with ease that everyone is aging at an accelerated rate of roughly around a year every thirty minutes while having blackout spells when trying to leave the beach.
In the moment where panic sets in for everyone among the group, they try to solve the riddle of their escape, although, they are literally racing against the clock. Illnesses go from the unnoticeable to advanced tide in mere seconds, emotional breaks make an unwelcomed return, and a pre-emptive barrage of the undisclosed truths gets thrown into the mix. The characters must change course and face their relationships, regrets, and the meaning behind their lives that seem in a blink, in only a handful of hours.
Cast & Characters
Gael García Bernal as Guy Cappa.
He is a devoted husband and a family-oriented statistician who attempts to shield his family from the escalating horror of their reality.
Vicky Krieps as Prisca Cappa.
Guy’s wife is an archeologist suffering from a terminal disease. She learns to enjoy the crisis for what it brings, appreciating her life and family.
Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie as Teen Trent and Teen Maddox.
The children, who are rapidly aged into their teenage years and eventually adulthood, are forced to adapt to the rapid changes in their bodies and minds.
Rufus Sewell as Charles.
A surgeon who breaks under the pressure of lockdown and succumbs to further aggravating his mental health, introducing another element of peril to the group’s fight for survival.
Abbey Lee as Chrystal.
Charles’ wife, who suffers from an obsession with defined aesthetics, experiences the terror of accelerated aging in chronic withdrawal from reality.
Ken Leung and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Jarin and Patricia.
The supportive duo who try to calm the group and look for an explanation found scientifically.
Aaron Pierre as Mid-Sized Sedan.
The enigmatic rapper who proves to have some understanding of the peculiar effects the beach has.
🎥 Direction & Style
Sketching the film, Shyamalan employed the core elements of his genre, which includes psychological tension and deeply unsettling suspense. The wide-angle shots captured by Mike Gioulakis had a sense of off-centered framing accompanied with longer takes that showed the confusion and fear of the characters throughout the film.
Rather than showing graphic violence, the film builds suspense through the horror of time. Children transforming into teenagers in a matter of minutes, witnessing the slow disintegration of the characters’ mental and physical states, and hearing the resounding tick of a clock add to the agony. The physical setting, which is a spectacular yet deadly beach, turns out to be an entity of its own.
🎵 Music & Sound
Trevor Gureckis overshadowed the movie with suspenseful undertones while the characters undergo panic. Silence engulfing the close surroundings, crashing waves, and heavy breathing has claustrophobic connotations, and feel meek and powerless. Additionally, the music score softens during critical moments, like when the beach starts to trap its visitors, which enhances the experience.
Themes & Ideas
At its core, Old is not simply a thriller. It is also an introspective piece regarding the fragility of life. Here are some of its key themes:
The Passage of Time
Time is represented simultaneously as a blessing and a burden. These characters are put under so much pressure to ‘make it count’ that they have to watch their lives unfold in front of them.
Family and Forgiveness
With all their problems put aside, the Cappa family learns to love each other and grows closer as they age together, learning to forgive one another based on shared experiences.
Acceptance and Change
A number of the characters confront their greatest fears, flaws, and even their mortality. The aging process is so rapid that they are forced to come to terms with the fact that they will need to keep progressing, or maturing, emotionally as well as physically.
Science and Ethics
Without giving anything away, I will say that the ending poses quite a few medical ethics questions surrounding the ideas of surgeries and the level of experimentation that may be deemed acceptable, and whether or not progress is ever worthy of sacrifice.
🧠 Critical and Audience Reception
Critically, Old had mixed to rather positive reviews. Many applauded the film for its captivating premise, the acting, and the emotional weight that the film carried, meanwhile, others felt that the dialogue and twist ending was rather lackluster. The movie itself was admired for its ambition and unique voice within its thriller genre.
Viewers appreciated how it creatively and thrillingly bridged universal fears- deterioration, mortality, and lost time. The final shocking Shyamalan twist also provides, albeit somewhat controversially, an unsatisfactory but Shyamalan-esque resolution to the peculiar happenings.
Conclusion
Old (2021) is a deeply unnerving, psychologically complex thriller that examines crucial aspects about existence, mortality, and the way we choose to utilize our allotted time. Alongside strong performances, the captivating premise and fast pacing ensures the film lingers far beyond the closing credits.
The terrifying nature of the film serves a reminder that there are no opportunities to reclaim, and each second of existence- however strikingly brief- is filled with enough prospects for relationships, transformation, and significance.
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