Old (M. Night Shyamalan, 2021)

[therewillbeblus]

M. Night Shyamalan has started shooting his next movie, titled Old

[thirtyframesasecond]

M. Night Shyamalan has started shooting his next movie, titled Old

Trailer has 'dropped' as they say - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYiSRYZx5pQ

Has anyone read the graphic novel it's based on ('Sandcastle')? Interesting premise, good cast.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm pretty sure that's the same teaser from the Superbowl, though I'm happy to have even less information than it shows so keeping to a 30-second trailer for a Shyamalan movie is cool by me

[therewillbeblus]

So I haven't seen every Shyamalan film but I have seen most, and I'm struggling to imagine anything being worse than Old. It's a promising concept, to attempt to meditate on the enlightenment born from acceptance over powerlessness, and the relativist humility found in focusing on what’s important in the scheme of things; to find gratitude for the gifts of the present, once sober to the privilege of time. Unfortunately, absolutely none of the grating sincerity Shyamalan approaches his ideas with is executed with thematic prowess. Shyamalan does imbue some neat visual tricks here, and since technique has always been his greatest strength, one would hope this could carry the film. But the script is so awfully trite, and the performances so painfully wooden, it's difficult to even engage with the film on that formal level.

For those who have seen The Happening, you have some idea of how poorly written and acted this movie is, but the key difference is that while that film had cringing dialogue populated within a story that had at least some peripherally developing characters and dynamics, Old remains as stagnant in this terrain as its characters are on this beach, reducing all of this development into brief, single phrases. Characters are defined by the unidimensional stereotypes of their jobs, and each line of dialogue they deliver aims to propel the narrative forward without any substance (Bernal’s pragmatist, Leung's nurse, and Amuka-Bird's psychologist are all egregiously one-note, but Krieps’ analogies don’t even make sense with her title!) The momentum is pulled forth at the lazy rhythm of immediately accepting and, simultaneously, deducing specific solutions from the internal logic of their predicament (and even more stupidly, with supreme confidence in each instance). This would be bad enough as 'student-filmmaker first-draft' deus ex machina, but when your gimmick is literally that time operates differently under the conditions of the beach, shouldn’t the treatment of time within the film be distinct between the beach bubble and ostensible normalcy of shore?

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Maybe the cop at the end -who accepts the “evidence,” apparently believes the fantastical story enough to take time from his vacation to make phone calls to The Cops Who Know All, has enough pull to get in touch with the right people, puts everything together, and becomes determined enough to confront the hotel scientists so quickly- well, maybe this impossible amount of action shouldn't be implicitly occurring in real time. Maybe that absurd amount of rope requested is even more nonsensical in a film where we are now supposed to notice an alteration in silly time manipulations once back to expected conditions..

Once we hit night, there are hopeful jarring setpieces and even some emotional gravitas that seems like it might work, but the oversaturated epiphanies embedded into each cursory regurgitated thought undermine their attempts at either pathos or existential affirmation. As for the twist,

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Shyamalan's goal seems to be to make The Exterminating Angel but warped into compassion for these trapped people as 'actually' oppressed, targeting the dark consequences of utilitarian philosophy by didactically disemboweling capitalist antisocial groups through exposing their routine, unnoticed sociopathy. However, it too comes off as hackneyed and overstated. It's far worse than many other possibilities I was hoping for!

I will give the film one thing though- the name of the famous rapped within the world of the movie is absolutely hysterical. Although just like The Happening, this film is questionably sincere about these hilarious inclusions... and for a director who is capable of getting great perfs from his cast, it's so strange how stiff and agonizing these works are unpredictably spliced in with the rest.

[Pavel]

I will give the film one thing though- the name of the famous rapped within the world of the movie is absolutely hysterical. Although just like The Happening, this film is questionably sincere about these hilarious inclusions...

I thought this was abysmal, but my rating is pretty high because I went with a group of friends and had the time of my life laughing my ass off at almost every scene, so I'd be lying to myself if I didn't acknowledge how positive an experience this film was for me

[therewillbeblus]

Whoops I meant “rapper” - and yeah, when I finally watched The Happening about five years ago, it was in a group setting a la The Room and we had a good time. I saw Old alone though, and sadly nobody in the theatre was laughing at the movie to elevate that kind of experience (despite a large portion of the audience at my screening being an inconsiderate group of immature kids who yelled offensive shit at the screen from time to time).

[senseabove]

I thought this was the worst thing I've seen in a very long time. The trailer had me afraid it would be a bloated Twilight Zone episode, and that's exactly what it is. Most of the time, TZ at least has the wit and wisdom to present a conundrum and walk away, letting us bring what we will to it and take what we will from it, even if sometimes there's not much there there; this, in contrast, has a steaming heaping helping of banalities slathered on top and stuffed into every possible crevice. I was mostly interested in seeing what Krieps, Bernal, and McKenzie would do here, but I'm honestly baffled by the performances. Those three have all shown they have ample skill in rounding out characters in stunningly subtle ways, and here, it felt like Shyamalan was actively working against them, demanding that they bring absolutely nothing to the roles that wasn't plainly written. The way Bernal hurls "You work in a MUSEUM!" at Krieps in that first fight is living in my head rent-free for just how awful a line and delivery it is, how it's presented as some Resolute Fact of Character, but there's just no way to deliver that line with any meaning because it's so unmoored from anything before or after. Like everything in the movie, there is no integration—it isn't character development for either Krieps or Bernal, it's just a Fact, with a little piece of string tying it to a Theme in Shyamalan's conspiracy wall diagram of the movie, that eventually ties to another Fact: it's there to shore up the simplistic, hasty dichotomy of past-focused vs future-focused and apparently justify Krieps' decomposition estimate later.

I've seen a few people try to defend this by saying folks piling on the awful script are ignoring what Shyamalan's doing with the camera, and I just don't think he's doing anything interesting there either. It's all as thematically gimmicky as the script, framing people out of focus or half out of frame to emphasize for the nth time a now more-aged facial feature or obscure a fact about one character that the audience knows and is waiting for another character to realize—that awful, tedious, interminable shot of the backs of the kids framing Krieps after their first sudden ageing—the frequent lateral panning and then panning back to "reveal" something that has changed very quickly or juxtapose someone who has realized something and someone who hasn't. It's all just technique as schema, the worst of the worst of the ponderous YouTube-style formal explication in reverse, devoid of any emotional complexity in front of her behind the camera.

[therewillbeblus]

I was mostly interested in seeing what Krieps, Bernal, and McKenzie would do here, but I'm honestly baffled by the performances. Those three have all shown they have ample skill in rounding out characters in stunningly subtle ways, and here, it felt like Shyamalan was actively working against them, demanding that they bring absolutely nothing to the roles that wasn't plainly written.

It's very similar to The Happening but even more bewildering because of the talent involved. Krieps' awful perf is a crying shame, considering her absence from the more exposed cinema world since she gave one of the greatest perfs ever four years ago, but it was Bernal whose deliveries really felt like Shyamalan was intentionally directing him to forget everything instinctual and turn into an automated machine. Every line of dialogue from him is similarly a "fact" based in his logical mind of statistics, and everyone becoming their occupations destroys the emotional undercurrent that is not only necessary, but that Shyamalan clearly believes is the source of the 'thriller' tone he's establishing. It isn't just bad, but it doesn't make any sense from the standpoint of what he's trying to accomplish with the movie.

The part that irritated me most was

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the pregnancy/birth, where in the background of the action, we hear Bernal dryly explain to Wolff (and to us) that they had sex (oh really?) before walking him through a sex-ed 101 class. It's such a stupid overexplanation, and while conversation/sound design that accelerates emotional dysregulation from Wolff would pair well with the visual intensity of the unexpected birth-going-awry, the mechanical fact-based informational chatter just wrecks the impact of what is trying to be achieved.

Similarly, it was a cool idea to have the rust from the knife infect the doctor's body, but even a shitty child writer could plant that information earlier in the film when he was wielding the knife so that we could have our own 'a-ha!' moment of catharsis there, and yet Shyamalan has to ruin what would be a cool manipulation of his context's internal logic with yet another monotonous rationale stated during a high-stakes emotional/physiological moment...

But that's the whole movie. We witness crazy things happening that should scare people and they gather 'round and immediately accept the situation and lay down observations and problem-solve with confidence against the grain of unpredictable stimuli. It's not only stupid and ironically operates as a socially-alien outlook at social insight, but the film doesn't trust its audience at all. Shyamalan spoonfeeds what doesn't need to be supported with direct clarification, and in the process insults the audience and robs them of opportunities to put things together. This strategy takes the fun out of the film, even for thrill-seeking audiences who might give him rope on the rest. I know I was ready to.

[colinr0380]

Without having seen Old as yet, in my mind it sounds like a mix of Vinyan (partly because Rufus Sewell is in both films) and The Ruins, which is a high bar for any film to attempt to clear!

[therewillbeblus]

Rufus Sewell is one of only a few actors (along with Aaron Pierre; and, arguably, Abbey Lee) who bring real performances to the film. I am beginning to actually consider the possibility that Shyamalan is intentionally directing awful performances from an awful script, given recent interviews where he discussed enjoying messy films, the improbability that some of these thespians are capable of naturally exerting this monotonous energy, and the fitting theme within the film about people being defined by occupations (bluntly declared by the kids’ game of asking everyone their name and job). Still, if this is the case it doesn’t make sense why Sewell would stand out as the only actual good performance, unless

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it’s an inside joke because he’s going insane, and thus not part of the internal logic of the film’s world- which actually works because he transforms from an initially wooden behavioral front to looser natural acting as his psyche disintegrates!

[wattsup32]

I am in full agreement about the performances, except Abbey Lee. If I had to guess, I'd say Shyamalan chose actors whose first language isn't English for the two leads so that he would have an easy out for their poor performances. From his perspective, it beats blaming the crummy dialogue. I assumed that the daughter character was written to be developmentally disabled or the actors playing her were developmentally disabled. It wasn't until the adult actor playing the daughter came on the scene that I realized she wasn't supposed to be developmentally disabled. That's how poor both the writing and the performances were.

I will say this for Shyamalan: whether intentional or not, he nailed his entire filmmaking career with the character he played in the film. His character thought he was much smarter than he really was. And, because he overestimated his own intelligence, he put no effort into doing his job well thinking his brain power was enough to carry the day. As a result, everything got entirely fucked up. And, that's been the problem with nearly every film he has made for the entirety of his career.

[Bumstead]

I will say this for Shyamalan: whether intentional or not, he nailed his entire filmmaking career with the character he played in the film. His character thought he was much smarter than he really was. And, because he overestimated his own intelligence, he put no effort into doing his job well thinking his brain power was enough to carry the day. As a result, everything got entirely fucked up. And, that's been the problem with nearly every film he has made for the entirety of his career.

I'm late to the party. Reading this now and cracking up, haha! Nicely done, sir.

P.S. I've been a Shyamalan apologist for years. But OLD finally broke me. It drove me mad...just like Rufus Sewell.

[The Curious Sofa]

With The Visit and Split it looked like Shymalan had finally discovered a sense of humour. These two scaled down films revived his career after a number of flops which were let down by their dour, ponderous approach to increasingly ridiculous subject matter. Glass was a failed attempt at franchise universe-building and with Old he's back to Lady in the Water/The Happening levels of awful. The writing is dismal, with not a single character acting like a recognisable human being even when accounting for the unusual circumstances. It made me feel sorry for the first rate cast, who were obviously struggling. All of which would be excusable if like James Wan's uneven but energetic and demented Malignant, the film would be fun but Old is a drag. When the twist comes, it's underwhelming and

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while I'm aware that Old was shot before the pandemic, its hostile stance towards science and the development of new cures and medications, is

unfortunately timed.

[TraverseTown]

With The Visit and Split it looked like Shymalan had finally discovered a sense of humour. These two scaled down films revived his career after a number of flops which were let down by their dour, ponderous approach to increasingly ridiculous subject matter. Glass was a failed attempt at franchise universe-building and with Old he's back to Lady in the Water/The Happening levels of awful. The writing is dismal, with not a single character acting like a recognisable human being even when accounting for the unusual circumstances. It made me feel sorry for the first rate cast, who were obviously struggling. All of which would be excusable if like James Wan's uneven but energetic and demented Malignant, the film would be fun but Old is a drag. When the twist comes, it's underwhelming and

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while I'm aware that Old was shot before the pandemic, its hostile stance towards science and the development of new cures and medications, is

unfortunately timed.

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I agree, especially considering a major talking point of anti-vaccination propaganda is that they are "unproven science" and that "they are using us as lab rats", which seem to be reasonable points to take away from this film's world and the twist ending.

[swo17]

It probably helped going into this with low expectations. I thought it was a good/clever idea for a movie, even if the execution is wanting and the message unintentionally irresponsible for reasons already articulated. And it was a good instinct to film in a distanced/disorienting way to obscure the impracticality of depicting rapid aging, though this could've benefited from a little more Fincher-esque precision. As an actuary like Bernal's character, I feel obliged to note that we do not walk around quoting statistics all the time--I trust that if you pore through my own post history, you'll find I have never once so much as even mentioned a single number. Also, I was mildly proud of myself for knowing the answer to the doctor's repeated movie trivia question, though I'm at a loss as to why this was brought up more than once

[thirtyframesasecond]

It probably helped going into this with low expectations. I thought it was a good/clever idea for a movie, even if the execution is wanting and the message unintentionally irresponsible for reasons already articulated. And it was a good instinct to film in a distanced/disorienting way to obscure the impracticality of depicting rapid aging, though this could've benefited from a little more Fincher-esque precision. As an actuary like Bernal's character, I feel obliged to note that we do not walk around quoting statistics all the time--I trust that if you pore through my own post history, you'll find I have never once so much as even mentioned a single number. Also, I was mildly proud of myself for knowing the answer to the doctor's repeated movie trivia question, though I'm at a loss as to why this was brought up more than once

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I know Rufus Sewell's character develops schizophrenia, but is it also suggested he might develop dementia too? Hence, why he hangs onto that one thing he cannot remember

[swo17]

That would make sense--I just wondered if there was anything thematic intended by that specific choice

[thirtyframesasecond]

That would make sense--I just wondered if there was anything thematic intended by that specific choice

His dad did the same when he developed dementia, exact same film.

[colinr0380]

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So that's how Laboratoires Garnier develop their products!

Well, I agree with most of what was said by the posters above, and kind of liked this as an extended Twilight Zone episode with a compelling premise that I wanted to see play out, but I found that the way that the film was written was often quite aggravating in how overly explicative everyone is being at each other. Nobody really speaks like a real human being in this film (at least until near the end when Gael Garcia Bernal and Vicky Krieps get to have a couple of touching one on one scenes together), which is at its worst when characters have to speak their biographies to each other in full sentences back and forth over the first few scenes... and then do it once or twice more, just to make sure we caught it... for ten individual characters. Particularly aggravating is that the bulk of the film is spent with characters who in a race against sped up aging talk in circles at each other and spend most of their remaining time stating the obvious at each other without putting the pieces together until they have been given multiple examples of things directly happening, and even then it doesn't seem to sink in. Due to how the characters behave from even before they get to the beach itself, it is hard to tell whether the characters are being dumb in service of the needs of the plot, or if the characters being stupid and naive to a ridiculous extent is actually intentional as a plot point (due to perhaps suffering from fast onsetting dementia, which I am assuming is only meant to be the case for one particular character's situation) or even more, is being done in an actively satirical way. For example I really think that idea of two six year olds suddenly growing into teenagers but still behaving like six year olds, because they have literally not had time to grow up mentally despite having done so physically (this was the first time I wondered what Yorgos Lanthimos would have made of this material), is a really evocative idea and explains a lot of what happens with those characters plot-wise.

Where I have my suspicions about the satirical aspect is particularly with the element of the vain supermodel type having to suffer both the indignities of suddenly becoming a grandma and losing her looks all within the space of a single day, until she is left as a wizened old hunchbacked crone wrapped in a shawl and hiding in a cave as an almost parodical equivalent of the wicked queen in a Snow White movie (which in the scene of youngsters being chased by the elderly lady allows Shyamalan to in a circuitous way get the chance to homage back to The Visit!). But even more so with the character of the therapist who constantly tries to 'talk through' the situation but just comes to seem more and more delusional, because all of that seems to play as really pointed satire about what a waste of time (and life) that back and forthing, and trying to talk your way through a situation can become if you let it entirely define your existence. Which kind of adds an extra layer of (intentional? unintentional?) irony to the final twist, where:

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all the laboratory staff bringing unwitting tests subjects to the fast-aging beach so that they can examine the effects of various drugs in a quicker way than would otherwise be possible are celebrating having given this particular character, whose medical condition is being prone to grand mal seizures, the equivalent of eighteen years of life without having had one. Which doesn't particularly acknowledge that after those 'eighteen years' of seizure free life, she then suffered what seems to be the equivalent of six months of back-to-back seizures before dying! And also on the wider scale brings up the implied idea of how pointless having those 'eighteen years' of 'healthy' life is when she spent the majority of those alone after her partner died, along with frittering the time away on pointless introspection?

Whilst I found the first two-thirds of the film a bit aggravating, I did end up enjoying the final sections of the film as things narrow down from the wide cast into the main family again. I particularly found amusing that moment of the father and mother going blind and deaf respectively and then having to face down a violent aggressor, which plays like something out of that Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder See No Evil, Hear No Evil film! (But which begins with the creepiest image of the whole film, with the short-sighted POV of a blurry figure determinedly dragging itself out of the dark and across the sand towards the camera. And in that moment of the wife getting in between the knife-wielding attacker to save her husband, that works as an effective climax to the couple's estranged relationship subplot too, as they both try to protect each other from the assault. Although, again, the writing ruins it by the husband immediately shooing her away - after she has been stabbed in the back multiple times - shouting (to a now deaf woman) that "I'll protect you!" as she runs off! Which was the second time I thought of Yorgos Lanthimos, specifically The Lobster), and it does seem that the main theme of the film turns into one of making the most of the time you have, however much or little you may have. Those final scenes with the mother and father of the family are really quite moving, and lets the film bring up a host of ideas, such as parents having to say goodbye to their children, and children being left behind having to comfort themselves in the wake of loss by retreating into just childishly building sandcastles on the idyllic looking but deadly beach that has become their entire world (which is a beautiful understated metaphor in a film full of somewhat crassly over-literal ones and bludgeoning underlining lines of dialogue, as it brings up notions of futility of existence and everything a human being does in a life being built on sand and inevitably washing away, much as the quickly decomposing bodies of the parents are washed out by the ceaseless waves) before having to take on the mantle of adulthood and responsibility for the world they inhabit, even if they have been left rather unequipped to do so by the previous generations! Or even, as the final twist proves, being outright betrayed by them.

I really liked the scene of the now grown up kids finding a previous beach-goer's sci-fi novel writings before that person's written account of the beach and then musing on that long dead person's experiences, and message left behind. Though I am also not sure that the film entirely capitalises on this moment, which could have been building to a comment on people reading their lives away (perhaps connecting more strongly to that moment of the mother on first getting to the beach just saying she will sit and read rather than enjoy the location). Maybe culminating in the kids adding their names and addresses to the 'guest book' that that previous writer was keeping as their own futile mark on sped-up existence. Though the diary with its 'guest book' list of names does get used in the finale...

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... although how did they get that guest book back to the resort to show it to the cop? Wouldn't it have been water damaged if they were bringing it with them through the underwater coral reef tunnel? It looks dry as a bone in the scene where the cop is photographing it. Come to think of it, how did the kids know that there was a cop staying as a guest at the resort? Were they just lucky he was there and had not gone home already? I should have stopped asking questions about four questions ago, however!

So, there is a lot of stuff here that I like (I especially like the Rufus Sewell character trying to live up to his mother's final request and attempting to be the group's leader and saviour but simultaneously going insane and instead becoming the bad guy, is very similar to the "Craig Toomey" character's rather tragic arc in Stephen King's story The Langoliers!), but I found the first half rather annoying. I would say though that the M. Night self-insert acting cameo is great this time around, where rather than being the self-aggrandising saviour of the world as in Lady In The Water Shayamalan is instead here playing the shifty bad guy brusquely directing the characters to their 'once-in-a-lifetime' visit to the beach!

[colinr0380]

It was also interesting to think that we might be seeing the beginning of a new trend in horror occurring with Old and Saw X (which strangely enough is also about medical malpractice!), which is the move from the individual psychopath towards a more wider scaled cabal of nefarious organisations of evildoers callously exploiting the vulnerable for fun and profit.

Which is a trend that for some inexplicable reason only really began to occur in earnest in the last couple of years. Although it is very obvious at the moment that even these films are having to somewhat pussyfoot around anything too damning or condemnatory of the wider society as a whole for being complicit in the activities of a few ‘bad apples’, for fear of being made filmona non grata (Saw X for example has to be about people unwisely forsaking the bleak prognosis provided by their doctors in the US and instead travelling abroad for shadily expensive 'miracle' medical treatment, that is obviously too good to be true but appeals to those looking for any shred of comforting hope. And then after the inevitable betrayal we get to see those 'bad apples' being cathartically tortured by Jigsaw). And the need to be coy and emphasise that these organisations of evildoers will be brought to justice in the end by their crimes being exposed to the authorities in the outside world is probably the reason for Old’s rather bizarrely awkwardly structured final scenes where:

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we see the two kids of the family escape through the coral reef, then have the kids cathartically give the damning information about the beach to the cop as well as confronting the staff of the resort face-to-face before showing them all getting arrested, before then flashing back to the moment that the kids surfaced out of the coral reef into the open ocean for what was presumably always going to be the actual and more ambiguous ending before the inevitable need for the script to over-explain things yet again so as to show justice being done. Which causes the audience to have to see the kids bringing everything out into the open and the beach now being taken out of the hands of private, mercenary organisations and placed into the safer(?) hands of the US government to guard over (where is the SCP Foundation when you need them, as this beach would be exactly the kind of thing that they would be tasked with monitoring! Although even the SCP Foundation itself is a shady organisation using 'criminals' as expdendable test subjects, so they would most likely be doing much the same thing that this private medical organisation was doing!).

So I suppose we should all rest assured that with the way films are being (or having to be) so guarded in their approach at the moment (and are maybe being used as a pressure valve about the issue), that we are probably not going to be getting any horror films directly featuring WEF or WHO-style disturbingly extra-governmental and unstoppably globalist organisations any time soon! Because that might be too close for comfort, and offer no easy resolutions!