LIFE IS A BEACH
Family's collective senior moment redefines a wrinkle in time in spooky Shyamalan film
I arrived at Old with a headful of questions. And 108 minutes later, I still had a headful of questions. But not the same questions. I suppose, in an M. Night Shyamalan film, that counts for something.
If you've seen trailers for the film, you know the premise: Married couple Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps) and their two kids visit a secluded beach while at a tropical resort. But once there they discover they are aging rapidly. In a day, two at most, they'll be dead of old age.
The writer-director, adapting the graphic novel Sandcastle, spends some time setting the scene. We see the family in the van from the airport and arriving at the Anamika Resort, where they are welcomed with designer cocktails and a plethora of activities. (Anamika is Sanskrit for “nameless.” Clue or red herring? You decide!)
Dialogue informs us that Guy is an actuary and Prisca a museum curator. One of them is ill, and both are considering splitting up. The kids are vaguely aware of
the latter fact. Six-year-old Trent makes a friend of the resort manager's son. Eleven-year-old Maddox keeps a close eye on him.
Dialogue also seems to lean heavily on the film's theme of time passing, but when you recall that “time,” “year” and “day” routinely top lists of the most common nouns in our language, it's not really that surprising. Time is often on our minds, and seldom on our side.
On their first full day at the resort, it's off to the beach, which is where the real weirdness sets in. It wouldn't do to describe
Old as a full-on body horror or a completely psychological one, though there are elements of both at play.
In addition to the family, there are two more couples there, plus a doctor (Rufus Sewell), vacationing with his much-younger
wife (Abbey Lee), their daughter and his mother. And a dog. You'd think with dog years that the pooch would be the first to go, but it doesn't work out that way. In addition to an early death, Trent and Maddox quickly grow into teenagers, now played by Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie.
Escape seems impossible. Backtracking through the canyon from which they arrived causes people to black out and wind up back in the sand. Powerful currents preclude swimming for help. And of course there's no cellphone reception.
Meanwhile, a variety of age-related conditions — puberty, pregnancy, mental and physical decrepitude — keep everyone on their toes.
What else to say? The camerawork is creative, with a lot of
fluid pans and turns. The performances are strong, especially Sewell, whose character comes unglued in the most inventive ways, including an obsession with trying to remember the name of a film that starred Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. (The Missouri Breaks, from 1976. You're welcome!)
And the ending is ... interesting. Suffice to say there is an explanation of sorts as to why a ritzy resort would strand its guests on a beach that is trying to kill them. It's not a Sixth-Sense-style aha! reveal. It's more of a Knives-Outtype elaboration.
It may not satisfy all viewers, but this one found it better than not knowing the wherefore at all. A tease without a disclosure gets old really fast.