“Old,” M. Night Shyamalan's New Old-School Sci-Fi Film Is Reviewed

“Old,” M. Night Shyamalan's New Old-School Sci-Fi Film Is Reviewed

The filmmaker transforms a simple concept into a compelling dream using minimal approaches and crisp imagery. 

It takes a tough man to create tender chicken, and a brilliant director to make a dumb movie, in the best conceivable way. Science fiction films, once the cinematic equivalent of pulp literature, are now frequently big-budget, overproduced spectacles that replace grandiosity for originality. M. Night Shyamalan's latest picture, "Old," which hits theatres on Friday, is unique. His common artistic stumbling block is a complication—the burdening of stories with extravagant but underdeveloped byways in order to imbue them with seeming significance and to ignite overblown consequences. With “Old,” Shyamalan has created a splendid throwback of a science-fiction thriller that develops a simple idea with stark vigor and conveys the straight-faced glee of realizing the straightforward logic of its enticing absurdity despite the constraints of filming during the pandemic—on a project that he had nonetheless planned before it.

The film is based on the graphic novel "Sandcastle" by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters and is set in an unidentified tropical locale. (The film was shot in the Dominican Republic.) The Capas—a near-middle-aged couple, Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal), and their eleven-year-old daughter, Maddox—are there (Alexa Swinton), and Trent (Nolan River), their six-year-old son, arrives for a holiday in a condition of mental tension and repressed conflict, which is immediately visible in a van trip along a palm-tree-lined road. The family is greeted at the sparkling hotel by an obedient manager (Gustaf Hammarsten), who, backed by a line of smiling workers, serves the parents drinks from a quick server named Madrid (Francesca Eastwood). The focus is too intense, and the greeting is curiously off—apparent it's to spectators, if not to the Capas, that something is awry.

Trent, a peculiarly serious and precocious child who asks adults their names and "occupations," immediately befriends another boy in the foyer. His name is Idlib (Kailen Jude), and he is the manager's lonely nephew, whose solitary existence is also a warning indication. Prisca and Guy appear to be enjoying the luxury, but they are also distracted by their problems: the trip is somewhat of a final hurrah for them because they are on the verge of breaking up. (There is also something wrong with Prisca's health that they haven't told the kids about.) When the manager gives the family a day trip to a hidden, secret beach that he says few visitors get to see, the emotional shades are lifted. In the van that transports them, they are joined by another family: a high-powered cardiothoracic physician called Charles (Rufus Sewell), his wife, Chrystal (Abbey Lee), her mother (Kathleen Chalfant), and their little daughter, Kara (Kylie Begley). (Shyamalan himself plays the van's driver.)

The trek from the drop-off point to the beach is long and gloomy, passing through a grotto. However, additional characters appear, including a psychologist named Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird), who has severe epilepsy; her nursing partner, Jarin (Ken Leung); and a well-known rapper dubbed Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre). Then a body appears, followed by rusted-out silverware reminiscent of previous visitors. Later, a series of strange incidents establish the film's central idea: the children suddenly begin growing up at a rapid pace. Trent appears like a large child of eleven, and Maddox looks like a high school student in a matter of hours. The adults then begin to age fast as well, and the fear that ensues is heightened when Charles obtains a knife in a “Lord of the Flies”-style power trip and the group begins to exhibit weird, accelerated medical symptoms.

Shyamalan revels in cannily graphic visual compositions, highlighting key elements without separating them from the film's finely observed surroundings, which convey disturbed states of mind in a jolting glance. (His own passionate attentions in creating and developing the film's aspects are contagious, and the film is as enjoyable to remember as it is to watch.) His joy in primordial cinematic power is shown through the timing of disclosures, the use of the soundtrack to trigger offscreen occurrences, and the employment of simple effects to create an interior experience. The depiction of children maturing years in the course of a few hours is Shyamalan's simplest and greatest coup de cinéma. From one shot to the next, he switches the casting—older versions of the youngsters are played by other actors (Thomasin McKenzie as the older Maddox, Mikaya Fisher, and Eliza Scanlen as elder Karas, and Luca Faustino Rodriguez and Alex Wolff as maturing Trends). Adults age as well, and the visible consequences are matched by the emotional implications of approaching mortality. There's some gory medical fantasy that ranges from the basic marvel of cutaneous special effects to the almost skeletal to the over-the-top surgical. There is the tragedy of mental illness, as well as a nasty aspect of racism that goes along with it. There is the sobering conclusion that the beach's magical powers are not an accident, but rather part of a plan, and that, as the aging process progresses, the beach's supernatural powers will deteriorate and When the perception of a large-scale dirty trick takes hold among the survivors, practical efforts to organize defense and resistance begin to take their toll.

The plot's development and the inescapable attrition of the party transported to and confined on the private beach result in some sly narrative tricks, as well as some ultimate twists that are both reasonable and absurd. “Old” is set in a dramatic bubble that, if pressed too hard, will rapidly explode, yet while it is afloat, it is both iridescent and sad. Shyamalan's depictions of loss span from the bewilderment of early adolescence and the agony of oncoming decrepitude and death to the just eerie sensation that unanticipated joys are too wonderful to be true. The economy of the premise inspires Shyamalan (whose own role in the film is exuberantly droll) to unleash images of simple but extreme expressivity, culminating in one that I'll be thinking about for a long time—a tracking shot, on the beach, that sticks with the action at times and departs from it at others, and that, in its evocation of time in motion, reminds me of the inspirations of a modern. Shyamalan achieves such a high just once in the film, but it is a fleeting high that few directors ever approach.