M. Night Shyamalan has only made one traditional horror film since The Happening, The Visit. Otherwise, he’s been engaged with creating an unusual cinematic universe (Split and Glass), collaborating with Will and Jaden Smith (After Earth), and directing a big-screen adaptation of an all-time great TV show that I won’t say because I’m still enraged about how horrible it was. With his new feature, Old, though, Shyamalan is back to doing what he does best: terrifying the hell out of me. (This is meant to be a complement.)
Old is based on a French graphic novel by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters. According to the official plot summary, the film follows “a family on a tropical vacation who discovers that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly… reducing their entire lives into a single day.” There are mysteriously aged children, lost goods buried in the sand, dead bodies, spiders, weird coded messages, and no one drowning in a puddle.
Old, which stars 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, opens on July 23.
