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| An attractive woman's legs turn old, wrinkled and into bones on a beach on this poster for M. Night Shyamalan's Old |
A beautiful family of four, who are, however, threatened by imminent break-up due to a still unannounced divorce, arrive at a strange vacation resort. A guide soon drives them to a remote, picturesque beach, where they and other vacationers start to age with record speed.
Old is written and directed by Indian-born American master filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan (Praying with Anger (1992)), whose 14th feature it is. It is an adaptation of graphic novel Sandcastle (2011) by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters.
An attempt at a thought-provoking concept here instead results in 105 minutes of characters who cannot grasp the wild physical changes they are going through, which only register with reactive groans and yawns for the viewer, who is 0% invested in them. Old is a streaming-friendly, speedy narrative of the Lost (2004-10) type mystery genre, where a batch of insufferable, yelling, screaming, crying characters leave you apathetic and thirsting for the end credit roll.
22 year-old (at the time of shooting) Alex Wolff (Patriots Day (2016)) portraying a 6 year-old is also an experience I could have been without. Old makes you wonder if the once fantastic Shyamalan will ever again hit the nail on the head with a film.
Related posts:
M. Night Shyamalan: Glass (2019) - Shyamalan buries past effort in ominous superhero nonsense
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
The Visit (2015) - Shyamalan's creepy mini-comeback
Top 10: Best Twentieth Century Fox titles
The Happening (2008) - Shyamalan's out-there, unsettling, undervalued sci-fi horror
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 18 mil. $
Box office: 90.1 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 5.00 times its cost)
[Old was released 21 July (Belgium and 6 other European markets) and runs 108 minutes. Shyamalan received Sandcastle for Father's Day in 2017 and decided to adapt it. Shooting took place from September - November 2020 in the Dominican Republic. The film opened #1 to a 16.8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#2, #3) and grossed 48.2 mil. $ (53.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 6.2 mil. $ (6.9 %) and Spain with 5.6 mil. $ (6.5 %). Shyamalan returned with Servant (2019-22) and theatrically will return with Knock at the Cabin (2023). Gael García Bernal (No (2012)) returned in Maya and the Three (2021, miniseries) and theatrically in Z (2021, unreleased); Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread (2017)) in Frida (2021, short) and theatrically in Beckett (2021, VoD). Old is rotten at 50 % with a 5.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Old?
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