The movie “Old” is based on the graphic novel “Sandcastle” by Pierre Oscar Levy and Fredrik Peeters, and one might wonder how Shyamalan comes across suspenseful stories like this. But, surprisingly, he also plays a prominent role in the movie. Most of the film is shot on Playa El Valle in the Dominican Republic.
In the beginning, we see the protagonist Guy Cappa and her husband Prisca Cappa decide to divorce after coming back from a family vacation.
During this vacation, they meet a few other families who go on a private beach tour organized by the resort they’re staying at. Every character enjoys their time together at the beach until they discover a mysterious dead body on the beach.
The plot gets intriguing when each of them starts to notice their body starts to age faster as they stay longer at the beach. The rest of the movie is about their attempt to survive on that beach and to escape from it before their clock runs out (literally). They all join together to untangle the mystery behind the beach but instead, they gradually find that they are all here for a reason.
The film connects many diverse dimensions of life such as relationships, age, race, beauty, and health. Although a slight taste of the crime thriller genre comes across at the beginning of the movie, it suddenly shifts to a 100 per cent thriller movie with a satisfactory climax.
One might question the meaning of their own life if they were to spend all of it in a day. But, on the other hand, one can raise a philosophical question of whether we are on a beach like that in our own lives.
Old portrays the circle of life, and the brilliant shift of actors following the nuances of age transition is so spectacularly illustrated. A brilliantly crafted movie like this should be on every survivor thriller fan’s top 50 list.
