M. Night Shyamalan has put out another thriller. He has received much acclaim from his past films, and there is always a high expectation for his films. He was initially known for The Sixth Sense, which is one of the most masterfully done suspense/thrillers ever made with a crazy twist, if you watch it for the first time and have not had the ending spoiled. Shyamalan has also produced other well-known films like Signs, The Village, The Happening, and Unbreakable. The films that he directs almost always have a crazy plot twist at the end, which has helped to add to the mythology of his greatness. The twists help the lesser of his films, especially those that are slow burns, because while watching, the viewer at least knows something crazy will happen at the end of the film. Now, Old holds to a similar standard to his other movies, and by other movies, that means his more mediocre movies. It does not reach the heights of his best like The Sixth Sense or Signs, but it was a fine movie. (Spoilers ahead)
Old is the story of a family that ends up booking a great deal to this all-inclusive resort. As the saying goes, if it is too good to be true, it is too good to be true. The family gets told about a pristine beach that is a part of a nature preserve with no public access, so Guy, Prisca, Trent, and Maddox get into a van with another family and head to the secluded beach. Things quickly start to turn South when Trent has a dead body float up to him. There was a man there already, Mid-Sized Sedan, one of the worst rap names ever, who had been with the girl that is now dead, and he had a nosebleed issue that made him a mysterious figure. Right after this body is found, another couple arrives at the beach, and of course they try to leave immediately, but every time a person tries to leave, they end up blacking out and end up back on the beach. Some try to swim away, one tries to climb, but it always ends in tragedy. The other twist that plays into the peril, is that every thirty minutes, the people age a year, there is some mystical element that causes the cells in their bodies to age rapidly. So, it is literally a race against time to escape before everyone ages out and dies, or they get killed by some illness that worsens due to their rapid aging. Eventually there are two left, and they find a clue to escape and expose the faux resort.
This brings us to the most important part of a Shyamalan movie, the twist. So while Maddox and Trent are supposedly drowned in the coral, the movie brings us to the hidden part of the resort, which is a medical lab. In the lab they refer to the people who have been trapped on the beach as numbers in an experiment, this is dehumanizing to the torture which they are putting them through, but at the same time, they do hold them in some reverence and have a moment of silence for them. So it is not the most inhumane of testing, where there is no regard for loss of life, but it is still messed up nonetheless.
The goal of the experiment is to take these families and couples that have a known medical ailment, either physical or mental, and to give them a medicine upon arrival and see how it affects them long term, and if it shows promise or cures the ailment, then the lab fast tracks the drug. The easiest way to explain this from the movie comes from a woman that had epilepsy, she was prone to having seizures, and she had a seizure at the resort before making it to the beach, but once she got to the beach, it took her like 16 years, or 16 hours of time on the beach, so they considered this a huge success and put the drug on the fast track for production. Essentially the people going to the beach are involuntarily signing up for a drug trial.
Recently, I have been watching The Good Place, and on that show, they have a philosophy professor as one of the main characters, and one of the philosophical quandaries they discuss is the trolly problem. The trolly problem is: if you are the conductor of a trolly and the track diverges, and one of the diversions will result in the trolly killing one person, but if you take the other route, it kills five people, so which do you chose? Then it continues into what if you know the one person would you save the one you know instead of five strangers, or if killing the five has a better impact on the greater good, do you kill the five? Theoretically, these people on the beach have the chance to save millions of lives if a proper cure can be found. In the movie, they say that 100,000 people have already been saved from their murderous experiment. In real life when someone has a terminal illness without a cure, there are clinical trials where people voluntarily sign up for a chance at a cure, but again this is voluntary, and everyone in these trials are involuntarily, and even worst, once the people are involuntarily sucked into the experiment, they remain unknowing about their purpose, and this leads to a Lord of the Flies vibe where there is murder, and many deaths based on people trying to escape in any way they can think of doing. The blending of all these elements, even though it has a high upside potential, makes the whole experiment highly unethical.
The worst part of this movie going experience came from the trailers. This was one of the times where it would have been better going into the movie blind and not knowing what was going to happen on the beach with the aging process. The trailer also spoils the dead body floating in the ocean that bumps into Trent. It spoils the girl falling from the cliff, and it spoils the pregnancy. These events are pivotal to the story of creating suspense and wonder, as to what is happening and will they be able to escape, but they get ruined by being exposed in the commercial. Now it is clear that when she tries to climb out that she will not make it, and the punch gets taken away from the scare of the body floating into Trent because the audience already knows it is going to happen. This does make me wonder, if I had not seen the trailer and went in completely blind if I would have enjoyed it more. I do my best to not view the trailers, I intentionally show up late to the theaters to see as few previews as possible, and when trailers get posted online, I generally try to avoid them, but it can be incredibly hard to avoid them all together, especially when the movie is supposed to be a block buster.
One of the areas in which this movie drew the line, was in the area of gore. It has a strong potential to be incredibly gory and gross, but it ended up seriously toning down the blood and guts. During their time on the beach, the mom had a tumor grow to the size of a bowling ball that had to be removed, while giving her the incision the cut would rapidly try to heal, so the doctors had to hold the incision open with their fingers so it would not close. This had serious gory potential, but ultimately, they skipped over the gorier parts of this and continued with the movie. They also had the scene where the girl tried climb up the rock wall. When she got to a certain height on the wall, she blocked out. When she fell, it was close to one hundred feet, so clearly it would have been an incredibly gruesome and gross death, but they largely avoid the image of her crushed body, except for her feet.
The instance when they do focus more in on the gore, is when the kids are in the cave. Trent and Maddox go into the cave to hide from the doctor, who its mentally losing it, and in the cave, they find his wife. His wife has a serious calcium deficiency problem. This means that that her bones do not heal properly if broken, and that they do not hold up as well as normal bones. This is seen most clearly, when the wife of the doctor tries to pick up a big rock, and her arm just seems to snap, and as she continues to get closer and closer to Trent and Maddox, her limbs continue to break to point in which they are unusable, and her limbs become tangled. The final time when they show her, her arms and legs are bent at multiple right angles, and it looks incredibly painful and gross, but it never reaches the heights of gore of other films like Saw.
Shyamalan did add some disturbing plot points to his movie, none more so than the pregnancy. When the characters aged, Trent found himself under a tent with the doctor's daughter. This resulted in the two of them conceiving a baby, even though they had previously been like six and seven years old at the start of the move. So after less than 30 minutes, the odd couple had conceived and birthed a baby, which while watching seems incredibly messed up. Not to mention that the baby ends up dying because its cell are aging so rapidly, that it could barely keep up for the minutes that it was alive, which was disturbing but clever.
With the rapid aging, it also brought some serious teen against. The kids in this movie started out somewhere between six and ten, so as they rapidly aged, they ended up in that teenage range. This meant that their feelings towards their parents and eachother were amplified more so than they would have been normally. It worked well, and a main part of it working so well came from their casting. Thomasen McKenzie and Alex Wolff play their roles incredibly well. Both have become some of my favorite performers since some of their recent works. Wolff for Hereditary and McKenzie for Jojo Rabbit. Both movies are incredible thanks to these actors, and if casting had picked differently for this movie, it would have hurt the final product.
Overall, this movie was okay. I feel like if I went into this film blind, it would have been better, but going in with a more knowledgeable base made it not as good. There were points where aspects of the movie still surprised me, but there was no big breath-taking moment like in The Sixth Sense, or as good as Signs. It is still a fine enough movie to go and watch, and it did lead the box office this weekend. It is an original idea with an interesting twist at the end, but it does not hit as well as his best. I cannot say that I would fully endorse a watch, but if you fall into a Shyamalan category of movie watcher, then watch it, but if not, then it is probably not worth your time.
Other movies this week:
Silver Linings Playbook was an Oscar winning movie, and it held up to the standard. The chemistry between Cooper and Lawrence was amazing. The story was very emotionally charged and created stress while watching it. The social awkwardness created also hit incredibly well. Definitely worth the watch.
Spirited Away was also an Oscar winning movie, it won for best animated feature, and it just had its 20-year anniversary. It was beautiful both visually and as a story. It spoke to the importance of selflessness and the rejection of greed. Not to mention its strong focus on the importance of family and friends. This is a must watch, even if you are not into anime, it is great enough to get you into it!
Snake Eyes was a modern-day samurai movie. It was action packed, so much so that they forgot that they needed to make a coherent story, but it was still awesome to watch in IMAX.
Movie Rankings:
Old: 2.5 Stars
Silver Linings Playbook: 5 Stars
Spirited Away: 5 Stars
Snake Eyes: 2 Stars
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