Old

(SPOILER FREE REVIEW!)

I've been SO excited for this movie since I first saw the trailer! I always want to say "I love M Night Shyamalan movies!" but that's not strictly true. I love some of his movies, in fact they're some of my favourite movies ever. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Village. I've defended The Village to the death and I still don't really understand why it's so polarizing to people, it's a beautiful movie about the effects of trauma. But I guess by that point in his filmography he was known as "the twist guy" so any nuance or artistry got overlooked. And of course The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are so incredible because of their twists. I didn't see The Sixth Sense until about 15 years after it's release date and yet I somehow managed to avoid spoilers and the ending hit me like a ton of bricks, and so much of the joy in that movie is it's rewatchability factor. The twist isn't tacked on, it makes perfect sense and is so obvious when you know it and completely re-contextualizes the entire movie when you know what clues to look for. Unbreakable is the same. I think that was the first of Shyamalan's movies I ever saw, someone brought it to a sleepover when I was teenager and it blew me away. Comic book movies were kind of meh back then, I would even argue that he helped reshape the genre into what we know it as today with his gritty take on real world heroes and supervillains. And again it's a clever ending that you don't see coming and it reshapes the entire movie you've just watched.

I didn't see Signs until fairly recently, and I was underwhelmed. The CGI felt badly dated, and I didn't appreciate the heavy handed Christian element. I haven't seen The Lady in the Water for many years, but I feel like it was the first of his movies that disappointed me and although I barely remember it I don't care enough to rewatch it. I have zero interest in The Last Airbender, and I somehow completely missed The Visit and only heard of it recently with all of the buzz for Old. 

I think Split was the first of Shyamalan's movies that I was really aware of since his peak in the 00s, and I remember being utterly horrified at the trailer and how it was using a genuine mental illness for scares as a violent criminal. I saw a lot of good reviews with no mention of ableism, and Shyamalan himself mentioned that his wife is a psychologist which is what inspired him to use Dissociative Identity Disorder as a plot device in the first place, so I figured maybe it just had a horribly edited trailer and was actually handled sensitively in the movie and decided to give it a chance. No, it's ableist trash and just as bad as the trailer makes out, if not worse. This movie was released in 2016, are we really still clinging to ideas of mentally ill people being violent criminals? If Shyamalan's wife is a psychologist then she must really suck at her job because I'm not a psychologist and I would never treat mental illness in this way and I would be horrified if my partner did. Film makers have a responsibility not to spread that kind of bullshit narrative that reinforces negative stereotypes into society which others the most vulnerable and stops them seeking help when needed and stigmatizes and isolates those already diagnosed. People with severe mental illnesses and a history of trauma are more likely to be abused, not become abusers and are no more violent than anybody else in society.

Despite my love for Unbreakable I haven't seen Glass because Split was such a huge dumpster fire, but I have been watching and really loving Shyamalan's recent series Servant on Apple TV. So as soon as I saw the trailer for Old I was excited as it felt like a return to what he does best, and when he's not being ableist as fuck he is a damn good storyteller.

I went to the very first screening at my local cinema, and this was the first time I'd been to a movie theater since before Covid which is a whole heap of excitement in of itself! In fact I realized that the last time I was at the movie theater was when I saw Joker and met Todd Phillips - which, on the topic of ableism was a movie I enjoyed largely because of it's realistic handling of mental illness despite the villain angle. 

Although I've only just seen the movie a few hours ago, I'm still not completely sure how I feel about it. This will be spoiler free so please don't feel like you can't read ahead if you haven't seen it yet, but to give you an idea of the plot: a family go to a retreat on a tropical island, and are advised of a more secluded, private beach by the hotel manager who offers to have them escorted there for the day. Two families and a couple are dropped off, but they quickly realize not everything is as it seems as they begin to age rapidly, which is most noticeable in their young children who are literally growing before their eyes. 

It's a really interesting premise, and the characters quickly realize that some of them have various medical issues which are further complicated by how quickly they're aging and makes their need to get off of the beach even more urgent. The plot is fairly solid, obviously it requires a suspension of disbelief but the reasons of why the beach is causing this and why they can't escape are made very clear. 

Unfortunately ableism rears it's head again, which really let the movie down for me. I really don't know what this dude's deal is and why he hates the mentally ill so much, but the character Charles played by Rufus Sewell is revealed to have Paranoid Schizophrenia which of course turns him into a violent murderous psychopath despite the fact that less than 13% of people with Schizophrenia are ever violent towards others, and are 14 times more likely to be the victim of violence than people without Schizophrenia. It's a tacky way to add an additional sense of danger to a story that just didn't need it - the foreboding 'time' chasing them was enough. Plus had it been handled sensitively the effects of mental illness on a person in that situation and the deterioration could of been a really interesting angle instead of a cheap shot.

Other than that it was a good movie full of the otherworldly bizarreness we've come to expect, but for me it lacked the slow burn suspence and atmosphere of what made his movies so successful at the beginning of his career. I do feel kind of bad constantly comparing his work, but it's difficult not to when it's been that good, and yet he hasn't been able to match it since and Old is no different in that respect. Time on the beach is supposed to move quickly, but it almost moves too quickly at times with so much body horror happening all at once that you become desensitized, and I didn't feel emotionally connected to any of the characters so didn't much care what happened to them. I'd read Shyamalan say how a lot of the script was based on his own fears of aging and mortality, which was compounded with the Covid pandemic which was ongoing during the time of filming, and yet somehow none of this manages to come across in the film. It's an entertaining movie, it's a fun movie, it even has something to say regarding casual racism, but there's very little beyond that. And unlike his previous movies that only get better on repeat viewing once you understand the twist and can pick up on all of the foreshadowing, I can't see this having any rewatchability at all. It's a one watch and done movie.

However I do continue to give Shyamalan props for his originality within the horror/thriller genre and constantly exploring new facets of horror with stories we've never heard before. And that's what will continue bringing me back for more. Just please quit with the ableism already, ok?