Old

Watched M. Night Shyamalan's 2021 movie Old (1:47:48). Families check into Anamika Resort, a .high-end, tropical paradise. Some of them are secretly invited to the resort's private beach off a nature preserve--and are consequently trapped there. Strange things begin to happen, among them everyone's rapid aging.

The movie's first major flaw is its sophomoric screenplay. We are not given time to sympathize with the characters before they start dying, and, when they do die, they remain the one-dimensional sketches they started out as. The dialogue is stilted, peppered with unlikely phrases, and ends up being hilarious, like a Bollywood script that decided to try and go serious without everyone's permission. The overall situation the characters are thrust into comes across as material for a cheap, group dynamics exercise. The usual, O. Henry twist at the end has become tired and predictable by now, and the entire movie becomes a mere, Halloween feature.

Its second major flaw is in casting. The performers are unable to portray their scenes with truth and with the right facial expressions, which is probably why many of the intimate scenes are under-lighted or defocused. The accents are perplexing, especially with East Indians on vacation--from where?--because they seem to be talking like New Yorkers.     

Perhaps the third major flaw is the director himself, He is already notorious for making movies based on "ideas" snatched from here and there, rather than on three-dimensional characters. As such, his oeuvre never stands with a strong, philosophical spine. Old, in particular, screens like a short story instead of a novel of a movie.

The best thing that might be said about this movie is that it took the risk of hiring actors who don't look like stars and who will never be stars. It's what Hollywood has been needing for the longest time.