A group of families on a tropical holiday discover that the secluded beach where they are staying is somehow causing them to age rapidly – reducing their entire lives into a single day.
- Released: 2021-07-21
- Runtime: 108 minutes
- Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thrillers
- Stars: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, Aaron Pierre, Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliott, Alexa Swinton, Gustaf Hammarsten, Kathleen Chalfant, Francesca Eastwood, Nolan River, Luca Faustino Rodriguez, Mikaya Fisher, Kailen Jude, M. Night Shyamalan, Matthew Shear, Daniel Ison, Jeffrey Holsman, Margaux Da Silva, John Twohy, Kylie Begley, Emma Jonnz
- Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Comments
- electricolormakeup - 1 June 2024
Important Message Overshadowed By Lines That Shouldn't Have Been Crossed
There could have been a great message here about how life is short, and arguments that divide us cease to matter in the end. But it lost all moral highground as soon as we got hints of what was to be the result of the kid's ageing. And what a lazy attempt at trying to justify its presence.
We get a very weak, momentary implication that their mind has matured along with their bodies. While there may be a degree of that in a person's physical and chemical development, the fact remains (and is demonstrated in the plot!) they're still children inside. They don't have the neccesary life experiences and education to make the sexualisation of these characters remotely ok. Most disturbingly the youngest girl, depicted as under the age of 4.
Even another fumbling lie to the viewer that she could have somehow consented wasn't bothered with. Throw in the dead baby and I was done being interested in anything else this movie had to say. It's only saving grace is the acting. A huge low for the director that shouldn't quickly be forgiven. - ShadowyMan - 29 March 2024
A Twilight Zone Episode at Best
An interesting concept stretched into two hours of painful, boring dialogue.
Decent actors, with zero chemistry, are forced to plod through this vacuous mess like they were stoned on ludes. Any attempt to create suspense or drama was further undermined by the really odd camera angles and editing. And, for a VFX-heavy film, any effects seemed to have arrived via time-warp from the original Star Trek series.
I have no idea how the director/writer continues to get production money, but I think he needs to give it a rest. He seems to make a credible van driver, so maybe Uber is his true calling.
TLDR; The poster and the cocktails are the best things about this clunker. - lizetwesselman - 12 January 2023
Decent story but poorly excecuted
I got so excited when I saw the trailer but was highly dissapointed. It starts with so many questions, you're sucked in because you want to know what's going on. We follow a family from the start and clearly something's up, but it remains vague, so you want to get answers.
Then more things happen, they end up on that beach, creating way more questions. Which is still fine, still want to know more. But then they never actually answer any questions. More people show up that we barely learn anything about, troughout the entire movie. They just all get involved in this aging issue and it affects them in different ways, like normal aging does to normal people. A lot happens, before any of those initial questions are answered. Untill the point you just start wondering what the hell the point of the movie is. And then some of the questions get answered in 1 scene. There's such a buildup to these problems, that you at least expect a massive blow up at some point. But that just doesn't happen. It's basically brushed off in some kind of "we're dying today so yesterday's issues are irrelevant now" way. Which I get, but the way they just solved it into 1 shot, doesn't do that message any justice.
Then, in the end, after a lot of unfinished stories and a lot of drama, we find out why they were at the island. Again, this takes up about 5 minutes of the movie. It's actually very interesting, but they decided it didn't deserve much credit. And then it's over. And then you have a very predictable ending to top it off.
So basically, about 15/20 minutes are pretty good, and everything in between is just overdramatic, badly acted, incomplete drama that hardly makes sense.
Too bad. The story was interesting but so badly excecuted. - DanTheButler - 15 December 2022
Too amateurish for its budget
Mixed feelings on this one. What starts out as 'The White Lotus' quickly segues into a 'Cabin in the Woods' scenario but on a beach. This is where the bulk of the film takes place.
There is an interesting story here but I'm too distracted from all the bad choices with everyone sounding like they've had to resort to ADR for the whole film. Much of the dialogue feels like a script in its first draft. The performance delivery of the entire cast sounds robotic - it seems like they only had one take for each shot, leaving the editor with miserable choices.
The editing could have been tighter and some of the cinematography is amateurish. No need to use shots because they exist, the editing room is for cutting schlock. It's like a student film with a full blown Hollywood budget. I've seen these actors with better performances in just about every other project they've done, so I can't decide if they were poorly cast or if some words are written so bad that there is no chance of a convincing delivery.
If you can get through the first hour of rubbish, you start to understand what's going on. The finale does have a nice wrap up, though it doesn't completely save this movie. It's not 'The Sixth Sense' or 'Signs' that I hope for with every M movie that comes out. 'Old' is more like 'The Happening' but everyone in it is Mark Wahlberg. I love Mark in everything but that movie because of its poor casting. - CapitanSepp - 28 October 2022
Appreciate any moment of your life you cant take it back if you don't
Movie is very amusing since you are about to see many surprises during the whole, 100% a right choice to watch with family/friends the theme of the movie and vibe of the beach and the different people on the beach is remarkable, even though the whole film is on the same area on the beach but thank to awesome camera angels it never gets boring at all! I could never forget the brutal and uniqe way of death(73th trial = for 73th times ) of the beach members and also seeing minors growing bigger and getting older And the last thing to conclude: observing aging process in a very quick period might look scary ,to me even it looked like a vary bad disease but as it takes decades and ages no-one feels how it actually is... - kessiebear-24936 - 30 September 2022
Interesting premise, terrible film
I don't know what's happened to M. Night Shyamalan's films, but this was just awful.
The premise was great, but there was just no workable execution.
Terrible acting, abrupt scene cutting, even the camera work was bad.. and multiple attempted scare / jump scenes that had the shot move with it, but way too slowly, so you only saw half of what happened - and certain scenes where the camera moves left then right then left, but only by a few inches, as if the cameraman was trying to get the positioning right but took multiple attempts, and they didn't bother reshooting that part.
Honestly, wish I hadn't bothered.
