‘Old’ is a supernatural thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by M. Night Shyamalan, who’s best known for ‘The Sixth Sense’, ‘Unbreakable’, ‘Split’, ‘Glass’, ‘Lady in the Water’ and the critically panned ‘The Last Airbender’. After reading ‘Sandcastle’, Shyamalan decided to make a live-action movie inspired by the graphic novel written by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters.

With Guy and Prisca’s marriage on the rocks, they decide a family vacation is what they need and bring along their two kids Trent and Maddox. During their tropical vacation, they are approached by a hotel staff who tells them of an amazing unknown beach, which he only tells to certain people. Intrigued by the idea, they decide to go explore this hidden beach and are joined by another family and later another couple.

Not long into their day they discover a dead body, the kids begin to age at a rapid rate, a girl becomes pregnant and delivers a baby in just a matter of hours, and they find themselves unable to leave the beach at all no matter how hard they try. They realise they’re actually living out the rest of their lives in just a single day and together with the little time they have left, try to figure out what’s causing all this, while also dealing with sudden deaths of those around them and trying to keep themselves together without being driven to the point of insanity and turning on each other.

The movie did a great job with the casting, especially with the children characters who go through the most physical changes as they age at an accelerated rate. Each of the three children had multiple actors to portray them at different stages of their lives, from childhood to teenagers, young adults, and older adults.

The attention to detail was also really well done, with each character having the same distinguishing features as they get older including hairstyles or the mole above Trent’s mouth, as well as absolutely no sign of any other life around them. No seagulls, fish, or any other sea life; just them.

Because everyone is aging so fast, their physical appearances go through rapid changes and even their injuries heal up almost instantly, even faster than X-Men’s Wolverine. It’s interesting to see how the characters work around this when having to do an impromptu surgery or even finding a way to use it to their advantage when dealing with threats.

Something that doesn’t make sense is how the children can act and think like adults despite having no way of getting an education on a deserted beach and with the little time they have left to live. Even though they become adults physically, they somehow don’t have the mental speed of the children they were when they first arrived on the mysterious beach. Later in the film, they’re actually able to problem solve, do some detective work and make adult decisions as they begin to uncover the mysteries of what’s causing all this. The ending does explain a fair bit, but it still leaves behind a lot of unanswered questions, including how the younger characters became so smart in such a short amount of time.

While the actors do a fantastic job in their respective roles, the overall execution of the movie falls just a little short. M. Night Shyamalan has a long history of hits and misses in his 29 years as a director, and unfortunately ‘Old’ is not one of his better movies, but it’s also not the worst.

The premise is definitely interesting, but it just doesn’t quite live up to its full potential. Even though the movie isn’t a direct adaptation of the graphic novel ‘Sandcastle’, it is the less superior version of this concept. Unless there’s a sequel that fills in the plot holes, which is very unlikely, ‘Old’ as a standalone movie is still worth checking out at least once.

Written by: Sammy Hanson