Nobody expects another The Sixth Sense from M. Night Shyamalan — that kind of poise generally comes only once a career — but there’s a cracked conviction to some of his silliest misfires that can be enjoyable in itself. (Killer shrubs?) Old, the writer-director’s latest, is probably the most boring movie he could make at this point: a perfectly fine, occasionally elegant, sometimes spooky but rarely ridiculous beach mystery for anyone who hasn’t binge-watched Lost lately. You won’t mind it, nor will you think you’re in the hands of a master, unless your idea of mastery is informed by certain supernatural episodes of Fantasy Island.
To that gorgeous beach (the Dominican Republic comes off better than most of the cast) a handful of vacationing families are shuttled, buttered up by their resort manager who promises a “once-in-a-lifetime experience”. Shyamalan is still doing that thing where he uses realistic adult problems to distract us from the fake stuff; this time it’s divorce, as a loveless husband and wife (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, neither fully persuasive) yell at each other behind closed doors.
There’s a poetry to this idea, but Shyamalan rarely engages with the emotional underpinnings.
Marital difficulties have a way of fading, though, when it’s discovered that everyone on the beach — including lazier creations like a bratty trophy wife (Abbey Lee), an arrogant doctor (Rufus Sewell) and a rapper (Aaron Pierre) — is ageing at the rate of several months an hour. Plus, they can’t leave. There’s a poetry to this idea, the years wafting by like summer breezes. But Shyamalan rarely engages with the emotional underpinnings of the material (the source is a 2013 graphic novel, Sandcastle). More often, he goes for shock payoffs: minutes after we see two children playing with plastic pails, they’ve become smitten teenagers walking hand in hand, a pregnant belly swelling alarmingly.
The plot gets bogged down in desperate escape attempts: swimming, free-solo climbing, underwater diving. Shyamalan’s camera is equally restless, whipping around the characters in a breathless run. It’s his best idea. Time waits for no-one, especially on this beach. (You may roll your eyes at the director’s inevitable cameo, during which he can be seen peering through a Hitchcock-sized zoom lens, an unnecessary flex.) The better actors, including Thomasin McKenzie and Alex Wolff, add a hint of dazed whiplash to their rushed adolescences.
Is there a twist? No director has ever saddled himself more with the phony heft of third-act surprises. You won’t read any spoilers here, but in making Old, Shyamalan, 50, seems at a midpoint. His new movie constantly threatens to be better than it is — deeper, more metaphysical, less beholden to gimmicks. Defiantly, it sticks to being about a haunted beach. And that’s okay. But someone should tell this filmmaker, so willing to waste time with elaborate contraptions, that the clock’s ticking.
