I laughed quite a lot when I shouldn’t have: Old reviewed

The biggest challenge in reviewing M. Night Shyamalan’s Old lies in describing its central idea without making the film sound considerably cleverer and more interesting than it is, but I’ll give it my best shot. Just remember: if I fail, and Old does sound clever or interesting at any point, it totally isn’t.

This is directed and written by Shyamalan who is one of the most consistently inconsistent of film makers (Sixth Sense, good; The Village, so-so; Last Airbender, let’s never talk of it again). The central idea has it that a group of holidaymakers are trapped on a tropical, secluded beach where ageing is accelerated and, as they discover, every 30 minutes there amounts to a year. This conceit is clever and interesting as it confronts our terror of getting old head-on, by having us notice it, whereas it usually happens so incrementally we’re unaware until we look in a mirror one day and gasp: ‘I’m my mother!’ I was looking forward to how this might play out. But, alas, Shyamalan doesn’t develop this idea in any meaningful way, instead playing it purely for schlock value, and overall the delivery is so poor that, while they’re trapped on that beach, it feels as if we’re trapped in an episode of television’s Death in Paradise gone nuts. Plus, it’s as if every 30 minutes amounts to a year too.

The main characters are a couple, Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps), who are on holiday with their two young children at some island resort when the manager tips them off about a beautiful secluded cove. So off they trot, along with some other guests, including a doctor, Charles (Rufus Sewell), his trophy wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee) and their little daughter.