The reveal in The Sixth Sense is one of the greatest twist endings in film history; it also might have trapped M. Night Shyamalan. Deemed a master of twists, every movie he's released since has been viewed through a twisty-turning lens — even the movies that don't really have a twist. This is especially an issue for Old, which celebrates its fifth anniversary today. The idea of Shyamalan's latest diabolical twist being "a beach that makes you old" got plenty of mocking, but that totally misses the point. "A beach that makes you old" isn't a twist. It's the premise, and if you can accept that, you can appreciate Old for the strange, beautiful story about mortality.
Released on July 23, 2021 in the midst of a mini-comeback of sorts for Shyamalan after a series of flops like The Last Airbender and After Earth, Old follows a group of tourists who are all visiting a tropical resort for vacation. Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps) are on the verge of separating, and this trip is a chance to have one last experience together as a family with their young kids Trent and Maddox. A member of the resort staff tips them off to a secret beach along with a couple of other guests. Once they walk through a cave to get to the picturesque beach, strange things start to happen. They're rapidly aging at the rate of a year every half-hour. Trent and Maddox soon become teenagers played by Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie, though they still think like kids. The older beachgoers are rapidly declining and will perish soon, and every attempt they make to leave the beach is thwarted by various means. Body horror ensues as they speed-run the aging process.
