Old (film)

Old
File:Old film poster.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	M. Night Shyamalan
Screenplay by	M. Night Shyamalan
Based on	Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy Frederik Peeters
Produced by	M. Night Shyamalan Ashwin Rajan Marc Bienstock
Starring	Gael García Bernal Vicky Krieps Rufus Sewell Alex Wolff Thomasin McKenzie Abbey Lee Nikki Amuka-Bird Ken Leung Eliza Scanlen Aaron Pierre Embeth Davidtz Emun Elliott
Cinematography	Mike Gioulakis
Edited by	Brett M. Reed
Music by	Trevor Gureckis
Production companies	Blinding Edge Pictures Perfect World Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	July 23, 2021 (2021-07-23)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$18 million
Box office	$23 million

Old is a 2021 American science fiction mystery thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, inspired by the Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters. The film's ensemble cast includes Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Aaron Pierre, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliott, and Kathleen Chalfant. The film follows a group of people who find themselves aging rapidly on a secluded beach they cannot escape from.

The film was announced in October 2019 after Shyamalan read the graphic novel by Levy and Peeters. The cast joined the following summer, with filming taking place from September to November in the Dominican Republic. It marked the first film of Shyamalan's career to have no shooting take place around his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Following a delay attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, Old was theatrically released on July 23, 2021, in the United States, by Universal Pictures. The film has received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the film's premise and cinematography but criticized its screenplay and uneven execution.

Plot

Married couple Guy and Prisca travel to a tropical resort with their young children Trent and Maddox as a final family vacation before they divorce. On the advice of the resort's manager, the family visits a secluded beach also occupied by rapper Mid-Size Sedan, surgeon Charles and his wife Chrystal, young daughter Kara, and mother Agnes, and married couple Jarin and Patricia. Tragedy strikes the group's vacation when the body of Mid-Size Sedan's female companion is discovered, which is followed by Agnes suddenly dying. Strange events soon occur, including the three children becoming teenagers. The group realizes that the beach is rapidly aging them, resulting in their health deteriorating. They also notice that at least one member of each family has an underlying medical condition. Efforts to leave result in the members of the group blacking out and waking up on the beach.

Amid the group struggling to find a way off the beach, Trent and Maddox discover the notebook of a previous traveler, along with indications of them being watched by an unknown individual. The attempts to leave grow more tense when Charles' worsening schizophrenia leads to him killing Mid-Size Sedan. Jarin and Kara perish during their escape attempts, while Patricia and Chrystal die from their medical conditions becoming exacerbated. Charles eventually attacks Guy at night, but Prisca slashes him with a rusted knife, causing a fatal infection. As the night winds down, an elderly Guy and Prisca make amends before dying moments apart from each other.

With only the now-adult Maddox and Trent remaining by the next morning, Trent revisits a secret message given to him by the manager's nephew, which he deduces is connected to an underwater coral passage. Suspecting that the passage will allow him and Maddox to not lose consciousness while leaving the beach, he and his sister start swimming through the coral. After they fail to emerge from the water, a resort employee monitoring them reports that the entire group has died.

It is revealed that the resort is a front for a research team conducting clinical trials of new medical drugs, with guests suffering from conditions being used as unwitting test subjects. Since the beach accelerates the lives of the guests, the researchers have been able to complete the drugs' lifetime trials within a day. The researchers move forward with luring a new group to the beach, but are interrupted by the arrival of Trent and Maddox, who survived their underwater swim. Using the notebook as evidence of several guests going missing, the siblings are able to bring the police to the resort. Once the researchers are arrested, Trent and Maddox head home to live with their aunt, uncertain of their future.

Cast

• Gael García Bernal as Guy Cappa, an actuary married to Prisca and the father of Trent and Maddox.
• Vicky Krieps as Prisca Cappa, a museum curator with a stomach tumor married to Guy and the mother of Trent and Maddox.
• Rufus Sewell as Charles, a schizophrenia-battling doctor married to Chrystal, the father of Kara, and Agnes's son.
• Alex Wolff and Emun Elliott as Trent Cappa, Guy and Prisca's son and Maddox's younger brother. Wolff plays the 15-year-old Trent and Elliot plays Trent as an adult. The 6-year-old Trent is played by Nolan River and 11-year-old Trent is played by Luca Faustino Rodriguez.
• Thomasin McKenzie and Embeth Davidtz as Maddox Cappa, Guy and Prisca's daughter and Trent's older sister. McKenzie plays the 16-year-old Maddox and Davidtz plays Maddox as an adult. Alexa Swinton plays 11-year-old Maddox.
• Abbey Lee as Chrystal, Charles's wife, Kara's mother, and Agnes's daughter-in-law who has hypocalcemia.
• Nikki Amuka-Bird as Patricia Carmichael, an epileptic psychologist married to Jarin.
• Ken Leung as Jarin Carmichael, a nurse and Patricia's husband.
• Eliza Scanlen as Kara, Charles and Chrystal's daughter and Agnes's granddaughter. Scanlen plays the 15-year-old Kara, while Kyle Bailey portrays Kara at 6 and Mikaya Fisher portrays Kara at 11.
• Aaron Pierre as Mid-Sized Sedan / Brendan, a rapper afflicted with hemophilia.
• Kathleen Chalfant as Agnes, Charles's mother, Chrystal's mother-in-law, and Kara's grandmother.

Additionally, Gustaf Hammarsten portrays the resort manager. Featured as employees of the resort are Francesca Eastwood as Madrid and Matthew Shear as Sidney. Kailen Jude plays Idlib, the manager's nephew. Director M. Night Shyamalan appears as the resort employee who drives the guests to the beach.

Production

It was announced in October 2019 that Shyamalan was partnering with Universal Studios to release two new thriller films which he would write, produce and direct. After Shyamalan read the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, a gift his daughter gave him for Father's Day, he decided he wanted to adapt the graphic novel into a film and optioned the rights for the story.

In May 2020, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff and Vicky Krieps entered negotiations to join the cast. Their castings would be confirmed the next month, along with Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Ken Leung added to the cast. Gael García Bernal would join in July. In August 2020, Rufus Sewell, Embeth Davidtz and Emun Elliott joined the cast of the film. Alexa Swinton joined the cast shooting in September 2020. In December 2020, Nolan River joined the cast of the film.

Principal photography officially began on September 26, 2020, in the Dominican Republic along with the announcement of the film's title. This marks the first time Shyamalan has filmed entirely outside Greater Philadelphia. Production concluded on November 15, 2020.

On June 18, 2021, at the New York Tribeca talks, in a conversation with Alex Wolff, Shyamalan described the movie as a 'Bergman blockbuster'.

Release

The film was released on July 23, 2021. It was initially set for release on February 26 that same year, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was released on July 21, 2021, in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Reception

Box office

As of July 25, 2021, Old has grossed $16.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $6.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $23 million.

In the United States and Canada, Old was released alongside Snake Eyes and Joe Bell, and was projected to gross $12–15 million from 3,355 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $6.9 million on its first day, including $1.5 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $16.3 million, topping the box office. It was the sixth film of Shyamalan's to open at number one, though it marked the lowest opening weekend of his career.

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 52% based on 188 reviews, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Old has no shortage of interesting ideas -- and writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's uneven execution will intrigue or annoy viewers, with little middle ground between." According to Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 based on 45 critics, the film received "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 61% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 37% saying they would definitely recommend it.

A.A. Dowd of The A.V. Club praised the film's cinematography while criticizing the dialogue, ultimately declaring that Old proves Shyamalan "knows a thing or two about the human condition, even as the basics of human conversation continue to elude him." Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman praised the film's premise, but said that Shyamalan "doesn't explore it so much as he throws ideas against the wall" and wrote: "Old, like most Shyamalan movies, has a catchy hook along with some elegant filmmaking gambits. But instead of developing his premise in an insidious and powerful way, the writer-director just keeps throwing a lot of things at you." Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal described the film as "peerlessly clumsy, silly and alarmed", adding: "It's also alarming for its ineptitude, but the film's greatest distinction is how its wide-eyed, trembling vacationers manage to sustain a state of alarm that’s intense and unrelenting."

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a score of 2 out of 4 stars in his review, in which he praised the film's premise and cinematography, but described it as "a thudding disappointment with surprisingly wooden performances from fine actors, and some of the most excruciatingly awful dialogue in any movie this year". He added that the film occasionally "plays like an overlong episode of The Twilight Zone, only with a much bigger budget and location shooting".

Richard Brody of The New Yorker was more positive in his review of the film, writing: "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." He added that the film "takes place in a dramatic bubble that, if it's poked a touch too hard, will quickly pop, but while it's afloat it's both iridescent and melancholy." David Sims of The Atlantic wrote that the film has "plenty of the clunky dialogue that defines Shyamalan's work", but added: "The central conceit of Old has so much juice, and Shyamalan gets to explore so many fun—if sadistic—avenues over the course of one very long day. It's his most ambitious work in years, wrapped in the delightful, tawdry packaging of a pulpy thriller."

Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail described the film as "pure chaos" and "a feverishly earnest look at mortality, responsibility and, um, well … I wish that I could explain just what I think Shyamalan is getting at in his final 15 minutes." He added: "Shyamalan is clearly having the time of his life. There are wild camera placements, stilted dialogue that runs in circles, dumb-dumb plot holes, a bizarre determination to have his performers act as unnaturally as possible ... and, yes, an obscenely fat twist."

External links

• Official website
• Old at IMDb