Shyamalan Movies are Getting Old
marina guimarães from Brasília, Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
M. Night Shyamalan's movies are part of what first got me interested in filmmaking. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable completely defied my expectations. No movie had ever pulled the rug out from under me like those did at the time. Another great thing about Shyamalan is that he is advocating for people coming back to the movies. I immediately placed Old on my list of movies to watch as soon as I found out M. Night Shyamalan directed it, and it was only playing in theaters. I will support any studio or director who attempts to combat the inevitable decline of cinemas. Just like A Quiet Place Part II's opening message from John Krasinski, M. Night Shyamalan gave some remarks welcoming everyone back to the theaters. I remember my excitement as the movie was about to begin, but just like any Shyamalan movie, it completely pulled the rug out from under me.
It wasn't long into the movie that I realized this one wasn't as uplifting as his other films. The reasons for this are the movie's lack of solid themes, its failure to flesh out the characters, and how it hardly lets the story breathe.
Old doesn't have strong themes. Although it does touch on themes that normally have a lot of weight, the film fails to have one overarching theme. For the potential messages that it does touch on, the execution of said themes falls flat. The movie's possible themes are Bitter resentment vs. conflict over time, Racism, and Regret over time. The theme that the film almost drove home was Bitter Resentment vs. conflict over time. A big reason for the execution of this theme falling flat was the other reasons that made the movie not great: weak characters and lack of breath. I'll use this theme to illustrate these weaknesses.
The movie fails to flesh out the characters. The movie Old is about a group of people trapped on a beach where they realize that they are aging rapidly. The film illustrates this theme using one of the families trapped on the beach who can't seem to get along. The mom and dad of this family are constantly fighting over an affair the mom had. In the movie, the couple comes together as they work against the conflicts that arise on the beach. They begin to forgive each other as they grow older. The reason for this theme falling flat was that there's no actual chemistry between the couple. Nothing is exciting about these two characters. There's nothing that makes the audience want them to succeed and work things out.
The movie hardly lets the story breathe. The film is so jam-packed with conflict that it barely shows the good moments between the couple. There's only one intimate moment between the couple, and it's near the end when the both of them are about to die. At this point in the movie, I didn't care about the couple's relationship. While this movie did a fantastic job elevating the action, it should have been balanced out by kind moments, giving the film more heart. It felt like they tried to fit in so many awful events that I stopped caring entirely.
This movie was not what I expected at all. Usually, M. Night Shyamalan's films have an overarching theme that he drives home. He has characters that the audience can cheer for, and he's good at finding a balance between intense and mild moments. While I was disappointed by Shyamalan's Glass, Old is an all-time low for this director. Thanks, Shyamalan, for supporting cinema, but this isn't the movie that's going to bring people back to theaters.
