Old is a 2021 American mystery thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan. It is based on the French-language Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle by and Frederik Peeters. The film features an ensemble cast consisting of Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, Aaron Pierre in his film debut, Embeth Davidtz, and Emun Elliott. The plot follows a group of people who find themselves rapidly aging on a secluded beach.
Shyamalan decided to adapt Sandcastle into a film after receiving it as a Father's Day gift in 2017. The untitled project was announced in September 2019, with the filmmaker revealing a partnership with Universal Pictures. Filming took place for three months in the Dominican Republic in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with cinematographer Michael Gioulakis.
Old premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on July 19, 2021, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 23. The film grossed $90 million worldwide against an $18 million budget and received mixed reviews from critics.
Plot Guy and Prisca Cappa are going through a separation. They take their young children, Maddox and Trent, to a tropical resort as a final family vacation. At their hotel, Guy and Prisca are given complimentary drinks by employee Madrid, and the children befriend Idlib, the resort manager Nils's nephew. At night, Maddox and Trent overhear their parents arguing and play a message decoding game from Idlib. During the argument, it is revealed that Prisca has a benign slow-growing ovarian tumor.
The next morning, Nils invites the family to a secluded beach, joined by three additional parties: rapper Brendan "Mid-Sized Sedan" and his female companion, who already arrived; surgeon Charles, his elderly mother Agnes, his wife Chrystal, and their young daughter Kara; and Jarin and Patricia Carmichael, a close-knit husband and wife.
Trent discovers the corpse of Brendan's companion. Charles grows suspicious of Brendan, who reveals that he has been experiencing nosebleeds because of his hemophilia. After the children rapidly turn into teenagers and Agnes suddenly dies, the families conclude that the beach is aging them, with the occupants undergoing the equivalent of one year of aging every 30 minutes. At least one member of each family has an underlying medical condition. They discover that trying to leave will result in them blacking out and waking up back where they left.
In a fit of rage, Charles cuts Brendan with a pocketknife. The group watches as his injury quickly heals. Prisca's supposedly slow-growing ovarian tumor rapidly grows in size at a life-threatening rate. Charles successfully removes it surgically. Brendan discovers that his companion's body has fully decomposed in mere hours. Kara and Trent continue to age into their late teens, and after having sex with each other, Kara gets pregnant at a rapid pace. She gives birth, but the baby starves to death as the time rapidly passes.
The attempts to leave grow increasingly tense as Charles's worsening schizophrenia causes him to kill Brendan. As the day progresses, Jarin drowns while trying to swim for help, Kara falls to her death while trying to climb over the mountain, and Patricia suffers a fatal epileptic seizure. Guy's eyesight blurs, and Prisca suffers hearing loss. Trent and Maddox discover the notebook of a previous traveler filled with names of many people who died on the beach, along with indications of them being watched. At night, Charles attacks Guy and Prisca in a schizophrenic episode; Prisca runs as Charles continues to attack Guy.
Chrystal's hypocalcemia results in her bones repeatedly rupturing and improperly healing, gruesomely contorting her body and eventually killing her. Prisca returns and slashes Charles with a rusted knife, instigating a fatal blood infection that kills him. An elderly Guy and Prisca make amends before dying peacefully of natural causes, moments apart from each other.
With only the now-middle-aged Maddox and Trent remaining by the next morning, the pair construct a sandcastle. They revisit a secret message given to them by Idlib, which Trent deduces is connected to an underwater coral passage. Believing that the passage will allow them to leave the beach without losing consciousness, he and his sister start swimming through the coral. After they seemingly fail to emerge from the water when Maddox gets her swimsuit caught on a coral reef, a resort employee who is monitoring them reports that the entire group has died. His contact, Sidney, alludes to a previous incident where a guest almost escaped from the beach. Nils then announces that trial 73 has concluded.
It is revealed that the resort is a front for a research team from the pharmaceutical company Warren & Warren that was conducting underground clinical trials of new medical drugs, which are administered to guests with medical conditions by spiking their drinks. Because the beach naturally accelerates the lives of the subjects, the researchers have been able to complete the lifelong drug trials within a day.
Nils and Madrid prepare to lure a new group to the beach, but are interrupted by Trent and Maddox, who survived their underwater swim, using the notebook as evidence that they give to vacationing police officer Greg Mitchel. Discovering everyone listed in the notebook is a missing person, he informs his boss of the researchers' crimes. The researchers are mentioned to have been arrested, with subpoenas sent to the rest of Warren & Warren, as Greg plans to reunite Trent and Maddox with their aunt.
Cast
Gael García Bernal as Guy Cappa, an actuary married to Prisca Vicky Krieps as Prisca Cappa, a museum curator and Guy's wife, who has an ovarian tumor Alex Wolff as Trent Cappa, Guy and Prisca's son (age 15) Emun Elliott as adult Trent Cappa Luca Faustino Rodriguez as Trent Cappa (age 11) Nolan River as Trent Cappa (age 6) Thomasin McKenzie as Maddox Cappa, Guy and Prisca's daughter (age 16) Embeth Davidtz as adult Maddox Cappa Alexa Swinton as Maddox Cappa (age 11) Rufus Sewell as Charles, a schizophrenic cardiac surgeon married to Chrystal Abbey Lee as Chrystal, Charles's trophy wife with hypocalcemia Eliza Scanlen as Kara, Charles and Chrystal's daughter (age 15) Mikaya Fisher as Kara (age 11) Kylie Begley as Kara (age 6) Nikki Amuka-Bird as Patricia Carmichael, an epileptic psychologist married to Jarin Ken Leung as Jarin Carmichael, a nurse and Patricia's husband Aaron Pierre as Mid-Sized Sedan/Brendan, a rapper with hemophilia
Additional cast members include Kathleen Chalfant as Agnes, Charles' mother; Gustaf Hammarsten as Nils, the resort manager who heads the secret research team for the pharmaceutical company Warren & Warren; Francesca Eastwood and Matthew Shear as resort employees Madrid and Sidney; Kailen Jude as the Nils's nephew Idlib; Daniel Ison as vacationing police officer Greg Mitchel; and M. Night Shyamalan as the resort employee who drives the guests to the beach and monitors them.
Themes When NME Beth Webb asked about the different themes tackled in Old, Shyamalan responded, "It's definitely about our relationship to time and, in my opinion, our dysfunctional relationship to time that we all have. Until we're forced to examine it, whether it's a pandemic or the factors that are in this situation for these characters, they're trapped on this beach, and they have to reflect on their relationship over time. You see some characters unable to navigate this, and then some characters find peace. Why did they find peace, and how did they find peace in the midst of all of this chaos? So there's this conversation about that, the one that I'm having of myself with time."
At the Tribeca Film Festival, Shyamalan said that the film's focus on aging reminded him of his father, who has dementia, and his children as he watches them grow up. During the event, Alex Wolff compared the film to the COVID-19 pandemic, "Coming out of COVID, it feels like time just stopped. And that's what the movie's literally about." At the film's premiere, Wolff was asked for his interpretation of the film and said it was "an allegorical existential sort of meditation on getting older." Other cast members chimed in; Nikki Amuka-Bird said the film was about not taking nature for granted; Gael García Bernal said it was about questioning how time travels differently for other people; and Vicky Krieps found that it was about "love and family and all these things that are much stronger than any fears — the fear of aging and the fear of death."
Production Development and casting
In September 2019, Universal Pictures announced its plans to distribute two then-untitled independently financed thriller films written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. In a statement, Universal Pictures President Peter Cramer said that these projects contained "highly original stories," while Shyamalan added, "There are wonderful studios out there, but Universal has made it a mandate to release original films. They are the best at finding an audience for new stories with unexpected tones. I believe original films are crucial to the longevity of the theatrical experience."
In May 2020, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, and Vicky Krieps entered negotiations to star. That June, they all joined the cast alongside Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Ken Leung. In July, it was reported that Shyamalan, Marc Bienstock, and Ashwin Rajan would produce the project through Perfect World Pictures and Blinding Edge Pictures, with Gael García Bernal also being cast. In August, Rufus Sewell, Embeth Davidtz, and Emun Elliott were all announced as part of the ensemble cast. That same month, Bryan Cranston said he had declined a role in the film due to a scheduling conflict caused by his involvement with filming Your Honor in New Orleans.
Filming and post-production On September 26, 2020, principal photography began in the Dominican Republic, and to celebrate, Shyamalan revealed the film's title and published its first promotional release poster. That same day, Collider reported that the film was an adaptation of Sandcastle, the French graphic novel by Swiss authors Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, which Shyamalan had received as a collective Father's Day gift from his three daughters in 2017. Old marks the first film of Shyamalan's career to have no shooting take place around his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With an $18 million budget, filming took place during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic with cinematographer Michael Gioulakis, using 35mm film, and concluded on November 15, 2020. After filming wrapped, Shyamalan said Old was the first film to be shot during the pandemic in the Dominican Republic and that, throughout the shoot, no one tested positive for the virus as he paid for the production crew's ten-week stay at a hotel.