Commentary: M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Old’ Is Just A Writing Exercise

Sometimes stories feel like writing exercises rather than coherent narratives. Writers present themselves with a premise and try to stretch it into something resembling a story rather than a grand plot built from the ground up. It’s fun challenge for a writer to paint themselves into a box and yet still come out with some sort of plot and characterization. Because these types of stories are already working with a handicap, general audiences will see them as flawed because, when viewed from a distance, they really are flawed. But it can still be fun to watch in action.

A great example of this is the M Night Shyamalan film Old starring Rufus Sewell. The director does this with a lot of his movies. He has a particular idea and tries to make a full length feature film rather than incorporate it into something larger. For instance, the idea behind Old is that there’s a beach where people age rapidly, over fifty years in a single day. The plot itself is very restrictive as the vast majority of the film takes place on just one beach, so right from the start the film has a limit in its setting.

But the story tries to utilize as many tools as it can to keep the premise going. The kids obviously age rapidly into young adults and yet still have the minds of children. This leads them to making mistakes, like getting pregnant. A tumor is in a woman’s body and grows massively. A man with Alzheimer’s becomes insane over the course of a few hours. People even try to escape and fail miserably. All of these plot points are used to experiment with the premise and propel the story forward. That doesn’t mean that the story as a whole is necessarily good. There is a lot to criticize about it. But it’s still fun to watch a writer try to execute a restrictive premise in the most ridiculous ways.

Old is now streaming on Peacock