M. Night Shyamalan is something of a marmite film-maker. After the early mega-success of The Sixth Sense, many of his subsequent projects have been more divisive. Unbreakable, The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening and Split have all received mixed reviews and the general reading-of-the-room was that Shyamalan’s films relied on high-concepts with a sometimes guessable twist ending.
Sunday night’s Super Bowl LV gave us a glimpse of his next cinema outing. It’s hard to tell whether Old might belong to, both categories – though it’s certainly high-concept. The film is about a family on a tropical holiday who discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly … reducing their entire lives into a single day.
The film stars an impressive international cast including Golden Globe winner Gael García Bernal (Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle), Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread), Rufus Sewell (Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle), Ken Leung (Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Jupiter Ascending), Abbey Lee (HBO’s Lovecraft Country), Aaron Pierre (Syfy’s Krypton), Alex Wolff (Hereditary), Embeth Davidtz (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Eliza Scanlen (Little Women), Emun Elliott (Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens), Kathleen Chalfant (Showtime’s The Affair) and Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit).
If schedules hold, Universal are releasing Old in July…
