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A family heads to a secluded beach vacation. They speak vaguely of the passage of time in a way that parents often do with their children, as mom mentions how she can’t wait to hear her daughter’s singing voice when she grows up. Shortly thereafter, it’s revealed that mom may not be able to do that because she has a tumor and this could be a "last trip," either because of her physical health or the health of her crumbling marriage. The passage of time changes at different points in your life, but especially when you see your kids growing up too fast and when you worry you might not be able to witness the bulk of their journey. When M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old,” based on the book by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters, is playing thematically with those feelings and allowing itself to be surreal and scary in the process, it truly works. When it feels like it has to nail down specifics, such as in a disappointing final stretch, it crosses that median line into the silly lane. The mysteries of aging are something everyone considers—“Old” taps into those considerations with just enough style to engage before stepping back from its own edge.

The family in the opening scene consists of Guy ( Gael García Bernal ), Prisca ( Vicky Krieps ), Trent ( Nolan River ) and Maddox ( Alexa Swinton ). The resort manager tells them about a secluded beach where they can avoid the touristy crowds, and they’re taken there by none other than Shyamalan himself in maybe his most meta cameo (after all, he’s the director, assembling all of his players on the sandy stage). Guy and Prisca’s clan isn’t alone. They’re joined by a doctor named Charles ( Rufus Sewell ), his wife Chrystal ( Abbey Lee ), his mother Agnes ( Kathleen Chalfant ) and his daughter Kara ( Mikaya Fisher ). A third couple joins them in Jarin ( Ken Leung ) and Patricia ( Nikki Amuka-Bird ). All of the travelers meet a mysterious traveler at the beach when they arrive in a rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan ( Aaron Pierre ). And why is he bleeding from his nose? And is that a dead body?

From their arrival, the beauty of this beach, surrounded by steep stone, feels threatening. The waves crash and the rock wall almost seems to grow taller as the day goes on. When they try to walk back the way they came, they get faint and wake up on the beach again. And then things get really weird when Trent and Maddox are suddenly significantly older, jumping about five years in a couple hours. The adults figure out that every half-hour on this beach is like a year off of it. As the kids age into Alex Wolff , Eliza Scanlen , and the great Thomasin McKenzie , the adults face their own physical issues, including hearing/vision problems, dementia, and that damn tumor in Prisca’s body. Can they get off the beach before 24 hours age them 48 years?

What a clever idea. Rod Serling would have loved it. And “Old” is very effective when Shyamalan is being playful and quick with his high concept. “Old” doesn’t really feel like a traditional mystery. I never once cared about “figuring out” what was happening to this crew, enjoying “Old” far more as surreal horror than as a thriller that demanded explanations. Having said that, it sometimes feels like Shyamalan and his team have to pull punches to hold that PG-13. I wondered about the truly gruesome, Cronenberg version of this story that doesn’t shy away from what happens to the human body over time and doesn't feel a need to dot every 'i' and cross every 't'.

The actors all seem like they would have been willing to go on that more surreal journey. Most of the ensemble finds a way to push through a script that really uses them like a kid uses sand toys on a beach, moving them around before they wash away with the tide. Stand-outs include Sewell’s confused menace, McKenzie’s palpable fear (she nails that the best, by far, understanding she's in a horror movie more than some of the others), and the grounded center provided by Bernal and Krieps.

A director who often veers right when he should arguably go left, Shyamalan and his collaborators manage their tone here better than he has in years. Yes, the dialogue is clunky and almost entirely expositional regarding their plight and attempts to escape it, but that’s a feature, not a bug. “Old” should have an exaggerated, surreal tone and Shyamalan mostly keeps that in place, assisted greatly by some of the best work yet by his regular cinematographer Mike Gioulakis . The pair are constantly playing with perception and forced POV, fluidly gliding their camera up and down the beach as if it’s rushing to catch up with all the developments as they happen. Some of the framing here is inspired, catching a corner of a character’s head before revealing they’re now being played by a new actor. It’s as visually vibrant a film as Shyamalan has made in years, at its best when it's embracing its insanity. The waves are so loud and the rock wall is so imposing that they almost feel like characters.

Sadly, the film crashes when it decides to offer some sane explanations and connect dots that didn’t really need to be connected. There’s a much stronger version of “Old” that ends more ambiguously, allowing viewers to leave the theatre playing around with themes instead of unpacking exactly what was going on. The conversation around Shyamalan often focuses on his final scenes, and I found the ones in “Old” some of his most frustrating given how they feel oppositional to what works best about the movie. When his characters are literally trying to escape the passage of time, as people do when their kids are growing up too fast or they receive a mortality diagnosis, “Old” is fascinating and entertaining. It’s just too bad that it doesn’t age into its potential.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Rated PG-13 for strong violence, disturbing images, suggestive content, partial nudity and brief strong language.

108 minutes

Gael García Bernal as Guy

Vicky Krieps as Prisca

Rufus Sewell as Charles

Alex Wolff as Trent Aged 15

Nikki Amuka-Bird as Patricia

M. Night Shyamalan

Writer (based on the graphic novel "Sandcastle" by)

Pierre-Oscar Levy
Frederick Peeters

Cinematographer

Mike Gioulakis
Brett M. Reed
Trevor Gureckis

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‘Old’ Review: They Say Sun Can Age You, but This Is Ridiculous

A half-hour at the beach costs vacationers a year in this disquieting new horror puzzler, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

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By Glenn Kenny

In the opening pages of “Dino,” a 1992 biography of Dean Martin by Nick Tosches, the author cites a haunting Italian phrase: “La vecchiaia è carogna.” “Old age is carrion.”

When some vacationing families are deposited on a secluded beach recommended to them by a smarmy resort manager in “Old,” the new movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, we see a trio of vultures atop a tree take to the sky.

Not long after that, unusual things begin happening. The young children of Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, both superb, as is the entire cast) feel their bathing suits tightening. An epileptic psychologist (Nikki Amuka-Bird) unexpectedly finds herself without symptoms. The elderly mother of the trophy wife of a tetchy physician just up and dies. A moderately famous rap star (Aaron Pierre), who had come to the beach some hours before, wanders around befuddled, with an incurable nosebleed. The corpse of his female companion is discovered in the water, prompting the physician (Rufus Sewell) to accuse the rapper of murder.

In time — not too much time, because, as it happens, it is of the essence in this situation — the beachgoers figure out that they are aging at an accelerated rate. One half-hour equals about a year.

And the beach that is aging them won’t let them leave.

Some vacation. Shyamalan adapted his disquieting tale from the graphic novel “Sandcastle,” by the French writer Pierre Oscar Lévy and the Swiss illustrator Frederik Peeters. As is frequently the case with French-produced bandes dessinées, “Sandcastle” is a stark existentialist parable. (It is perhaps no coincidence that the book Krieps’s character attempts to read on the beach is a dual biography of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.) Shyamalan expands on the book in the way one would expect an American filmmaker to — among other things, eventually offering a sort-of explanation that the source material doesn’t.

Being PG-13, “Old” does not dwell, as the graphic novel does, on how rapid aging affects the children of this ensemble in the hormonal department once they hit their teens, although one pregnancy does occur during the victims’ shared life-in-a-day. Instead, the movie buckles down on the considerable anxiety and dread felt, and amplified, by the frequently bickering adults. Because time is accelerated here, wounds heal incredibly quickly. The director exploits this for a couple of weirdly harrowing knife fights and an impromptu surgery scene. The horrific potential of bones breaking, then instantly resetting themselves incorrectly, does not go unnoticed.

Shyamalan’s fluid filmmaking style, outstanding features of which are an almost ever-mobile camera and a bag of focus tricks, serves him especially well here. Sometimes the camera will pan back and forth in a ticktock pendulum fashion (get it?) and return to its starting point to reveal a terrifying change. The way he switches out his actors as their characters age is seamless. (The filmmaker’s work in the verbal department is not so felicitous. He names Pierre’s rap star “Mid-Sized Sedan”; early on one character complains to another, “You’re always thinking about the future, and it makes me feel not seen.”)

If old age is carrion, it’s also, as a “Citizen Kane” character put it, the one disease you don’t look forward to curing, which provides the impetus for the movie’s finale. While Shyamalan is often cited for his tricky endings , it’s arguable that he doesn’t quite stick the landing with this one. He adds to the story a dollop of that much-venerated Hollywood commodity, hope, and also doles out some anti-science propaganda that couldn’t be more unwelcome at this particular time in the real world.

Old Rated PG-13 for horrific imagery, language and aging. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters.

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Old Reviews

Shyamalan’s efforts to stretch this into 108 minutes leaves far too many dull lapses.

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Aug 10, 2023

A HORRIFYING Concept that will have you leaving the theater contemplating your life & the time you spend in it!

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Old is one of those cases of a remarkably unique, intriguing concept failing to reach its potential due to an overall disappointing execution of too many ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 25, 2023

Questionable conclusions aside, you still can’t deny the beautiful simplicity of Old’s concept or the cast’s stellar performances throughout the feature.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2023

...Old fails to live up to its potential because of its half-baked, poorly written characters

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

That pitch and pace unfortunately does the ensemble cast no favors, all of them struggling mightily to deliver some of the clunkiest dialogue of Shyamalan’s career.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2023

Though Old has a number of observable shortcomings, my overall impression of the film that sticks with me is that of excitement and amusement.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | May 2, 2023

Shymalan’s latest is compellingly perverse and wracked with a real sense of menace, making its hopeful denouement something of a betrayal.

Full Review | Mar 13, 2023

Quite beautiful and very stupid.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Oct 12, 2022

“Old” sees Shyamalan once again blending the supernatural with the real world to make something that’s uniquely his own. Not everyone will be onboard, but I was.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 17, 2022

Add Old to the unrealised potential column of M Night Shyamalan's filmography.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 8, 2022

The director’s latest reconfirms my original sentiments that M. Night Shyamalan is a one-trick pony who isn’t the most exciting filmmaker.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 10, 2022

"Old" is wildly inconsistent, preventing it from ever being genuinely as good as some of the director's better works such as "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable," or "Split."

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 20, 2022

Old's breakneck pacing once things start going south leaves little room to delve into character and personal relationships, or feature enough quieter flashes that would have helped to create sympathy for these people we've not long met.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 26, 2022

iOldi represents the sort of solid mid-range thriller that use to litter the multiplexes 25 years ago.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 13, 2022

Try as it might, Old doesnt live up to its trailer, nor does it stand tall against some of Shyamalans other films.

Full Review | Feb 26, 2022

What is clear, however, is that Old is nowhere near the project many were hoping it would be and will leave many audience members and long-time Shyamalan fans shaking their heads.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2022

Shyamalan remains more invested in setting the hook than reeling in his audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

While far from a masterpiece, Old is an entertaining thought exercise from one of Hollywoods most invigorating filmmakers.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 12, 2022

Old delivers on its buildup of tension, although it struggles to engage on a dramatic level.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 12, 2022

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‘Old’ Review: M. Night Shyamalan Turns a Day at the Beach Into a Nightmare of Aging. But Are His Gimmicks Getting Old?

It's a good premise, but the director doesn't explore it so much as he throws ideas against the wall.

By Owen Gleiberman

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Everyone likes to talk about the big twist at the end of an M. Night Shyamalan movie: Was it good for you? Did you see it coming? Did it turn the rest of the movie into nonsense? (In some Shyamalan films, no twist is required to do that.) Yet for all the attention paid to Shyamalan’s trademark teasing grand finales, it’s the little twists in his movies — the ones that happen along the way — that can determine whether the film in question is spinning a yarn worth telling or just spinning its wheels.

In “ Old ,” Shyamalan’s latest is-it-clever-or-just-dumb-or-is-it-both? slow-burn creepshow, there’s a moment you either get past or you don’t. Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca ( Vicky Krieps ) are on vacation at a ritzy tropical-island resort along with their two children, 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and 6-year-old Trent (Nolan River). There’s a bit of drama the kids don’t know about; their folks are on the verge of splitting up, and Prisca has had a health scare. Nevertheless, the couple is putting on a good face, and they embrace an offer made by the unctuous Euro resort manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) to take a day trip to a special beach hidden behind a spectacular rocky cliff on the other side of the island. (The van driver is played by Shyamalan, who is now 50. For what it’s worth, he looks remarkably young.)

On the beach, they’re joined by a handful of the hotel’s other guests, and that’s when bizarre things start to happen. The body of a nude swimmer shows up dead in the water. Anyone who stands in the adjacent canyon blacks out. Oh, and the two children suddenly look a lot older — they’re now 16 and 11.

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What’s going on? The beach possesses a mysterious quality that ages anyone who’s on it. Every half an hour, you get one year older. It’s most noticeable with the children, but after a while mention is made of the small tumor that was detected in Prisca’s abdomen. It was three centimeters; now it’s the size of a golf ball — and then, minutes later, the size of a grapefruit. (It’s growing as quickly as she ages.) So what happens? Charles (Rufus Sewell), an eccentrically intense and jabbering physician, decides to operate — right there on the beach, without anesthesia. (It turns out that an incision will heal instantly.) Boom! — the tumor is out, just like that. But since the audience is still absorbing the premise of the movie — that just about everyone on the beach will be heading toward the grave within 24 hours — the fact that this impromptu surgery just sort of… happens , because Shyamalan thought it would be a cool idea, may stick in your moviegoing craw. It’s a twist more fanciful than logical, but Shyamalan doesn’t seem to care. He’s holding your attention!

“Old,” like most Shyamalan movies, has a catchy hook along with some elegant filmmaking gambits. But instead of developing his premise in an insidious and powerful way, the writer-director just keeps throwing things at you. That nude swimmer was the paramour of a famous rapper named Mid-Size Sedan (Aaron Pierre), who Charles the surgeon wastes no time accusing of murder. The movie cues us to think that’s a racist idea, yet isn’t above exploiting it for suspense. And why is the rapper’s nose bleeding? Charles and his high-maintenance wife, Chrystal (Abbey Lee), have an 11-year-old daughter of their own, Kara (Mikaya Fisher), and before long she and Trent, who are now teenagers, have hooked up, and she has gotten pregnant. And where are Guy and Prisca in all this? Bizarrely, they don’t look any older. Reference is made to wrinkles, and after a while we glimpse a few, but basically these two — and the other adults — just kind of remain the people they were, which seems extremely odd in a movie that is otherwise about such dramatic developments.

When you nitpick a thriller, you can sound like one of those people who Hitchcock referred to, with weary futility, as “the plausibles” (as if plausibility were the only thing that mattered to them). But “Old,” even once you accept where it’s going, lacks shape and consistency. It has a compelling off-kilter visual style, with the camera hinting at things just out of sight, but the characters keep explaining who they are in cliché psychotherapeutic soundbites; at times, the film threatens to turn into the “Twilight Zone” version of a 12-step meeting. The characters are trapped on that beach, and Shyamalan creates a convincing claustrophobia, but part of it is that you wish most of them were better company.

The real trouble with the movie is that its rules are so arbitrary. A corpse decays to bone in half an hour. The adults all age by barely visible increments. Each family, tellingly, has a malady — but some are physical, some mental. (Charles the surgeon is a head case who keeps wondering, for some godforsaken reason, which movie costarred Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando. It was “The Missouri Breaks,” for anyone playing movie “Jeopardy.”) One character ends up with a mass of contorted limbs like something out of a demonic-possession film. Another scales the vertical rock face to escape, then fatally falls asleep during the climb. A few of these issues come into focus with the big twist, which for a moment makes villainous characters look weirdly benign, then villainous again. More than ever, though, the twist in a Shyamalan film makes one ask: Was it worth sitting through the entire movie for this ? Or is that feeling getting old?

Reviewed at Crosby St. Screening Room, New York, July 21, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 108 MIN.

Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Blinding Edge Pictures production. Producers: M. Night Shyamalan, Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock. Executive producer: Steven Schneider.
Crew: Director, screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan. Camera: Mike Gioulakis. Editor: Brett M. Reed. Music: Trevor Gureckis.
With: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Eliza Scanlen, Kathleen Chalfant, Gustaf Hammarsten, Thomasin McKenzie, Embeth Davidtz.

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M. Night Shyamalan Still Knows What You’re Thinking — And ‘Old’ Leans Into Its Twists

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

M. Night Shyamalan knows you’re thinking: Wait for it . And, Everything is a clue . He knows that, ever since The Sixth Sense , with its late-stage, near-spontaneous clicking into place of suggestions and hints many viewers didn’t even know they were meant to be looking out for, audiences have watched his work with an eye verging on suspicion. And we’re all so busy looking for the catch that we sometimes overlook the more enduring, sometimes beautiful, often silly, not-infrequently satisfying pleasures he brandishes right in front of our faces — pleasures that include his continually impressive hand, alongside his estimable collaborators, as a stylist and technician. He knows that he’s contemporary American movie-going’s answer to O. Henry, a name synonymous with “twist,” if only because of our own, enduring expectations.

The Fall and Rise of M. Night Shyamalan

Granted, Shyamalan has also persisted in leaning into the idea. Surely he knows that this has set up some of his work to fail among a clue-hungry audience, making us look for twists and last-minute dashes of clarity where what his work means to offer is something more metaphysical, as in Signs , or where the endgame can’t quite withstand the pressure of having to cleverly sweep the rug from beneath our feet, as in The Happening or The Village — two maligned movies which, whatever their faults, are parables hiding in plain sight, more notable for what they’re trying to say than for what they mean to withhold, even as in classic Shyamalan style, plenty gets withheld until the last minute.

On the surface, it’s a little reminiscent of the problem that Hitchcock’s Psycho still faces , with its long-beleaguered ending — its late drift into explanatory psychobabble feeling incommensurate, for some, with everything that came before. You simply cannot explain away the inexplicable, the horrific, the outright weird. The difference is that Psycho ’s power is in exactly its willingness to illustrate that gap by risking our dissatisfaction: The ending doesn’t really match up with the sublime avenues of horror leading up to it, which ultimately becomes a failure, not of the movie, but of the people within it, trying to make sense of nonsense in ways that feel unasked-for, almost intrusive.

Shyamalan’s films have a related but different problem: Everything leading up to their endings seems predicated on the promise of explanation. Sit around, wait awhile; it’ll all make sense-ish eventually. Or, if you choose, watch with magnifying glass in hand, trying to get a step ahead of the movie, as Sherlock might.

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One of the funny things about Old, Shyamalan’s new movie, is that, for all its mysteries and their conclusory (and not very satisfying) explanations, the real meat of the endeavor is devoted to the fairly obvious. A Thing is happening; watching people deal with that Thing is, more-so than any explanation for why it’s happening, what the movie is about. The eventual explanations are extraordinarily secondary; you could lop them off of the movie and arrive at a project whose prevailing “message” is perhaps muddled, but whose effects and main ideas aren’t, or at least, not really. In the first place, what the movie is about largely traffics in the obvious — starting with the tone set by its title, Old , and the poster, in which that word lingers menacingly over a woman’s foot that’s being rendered skeletal before our eyes, as if the beachy shores on which the woman appears were some sort of death-ray vision.

Maybe they are! That would be pretty corny. But corniness is next to godliness in the world of Shyamalan, and Old — with its overt dialogue, its obviousness at every turn, its overly-neat echoing in characters’ backstories and occupations — is better, not worse, for laying almost all of its cards on the table, practically in full view from the start. The movie stars Phantom Thread ’ s Vicky Krieps, as Prisca, a museum curator, and her husband, Guy, an actuary for an insurance company, is played by Gael García Bernal . A married couple that seem to be on the outs (or at least on the verge), they decide to take the kids on an exotic weekend getaway. Fast-forward — past the hushed arguments between Prisca and Guy; past the random oddities and light catastrophes happening at the resort; all the tidbits of maybe-relevant, maybe-not information that leak out with perverse frequency — to the hotel manager offering them a sweet deal: Access to a secret beach on a nature preserve, only a short ride away — an offer extended to only his favorite guests, of course.

So it begins. For this to be the only family given such an offer would be too good to be true; other families have also, apparently, been invited. A doctor ( Rufus Sewell ) and his modelesque younger wife (Abbey Lee), both of them vain, though in distinct ways, plus his mother and their daughter; a psychiatrist named Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and her husband, Jarin (Ken Leung), who’s a nurse. Them, plus a beach straggler that they all only notice after the fact. Make that two stragglers. One, we learn, is a dead body.

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“Old,” Reviewed: M. Night Shyamalan’s New Old-School Sci-Fi Movie

By Richard Brody

Just as it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken , it takes a smart filmmaker to make a stupid movie, which I mean in the best possible way. Science-fiction films, once a cinematic counterpart to pulp fiction, are today often big-budget, overproduced spectacles that substitute grandiosity for imagination. M. Night Shyamalan ’s new film, “Old” (which opens in theatres on Friday), is different. His frequent artistic pitfall is complication—the burdening of stories with extravagant yet undeveloped byways in order to endow them with ostensible significance and to stoke exaggerated effects. With “Old,” facing the constraints of filming during the pandemic —on a project that he’d nonetheless planned before it—Shyamalan has created a splendid throwback of a science-fiction thriller that develops a simple idea with stark vigor and conveys the straight-faced glee of realizing the straightforward logic of its enticing absurdity.

The movie, based on the graphic novel “ Sandcastle ,” by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, is centered on a tropical beach resort in an unnamed country. (Filming was done in the Dominican Republic.) There, the Capa family—a near-middle-aged couple, Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and Guy (Gael García Bernal), their eleven-year-old daughter, Maddox (Alexa Swinton), and their six-year-old son, Trent (Nolan River)—arrives for a vacation in a state of emotional stress and stifled conflict that’s already on view in a van ride on a road lined with palm trees. At the gleaming hotel, the family is met by an obsequious manager (Gustaf Hammarsten), who, backed by a line of smiling staffers, plies the parents with cocktails from a prompt server named Madrid (Francesca Eastwood). The attention is too great, the welcome suspiciously wrong—it’s obvious to viewers, if not to the Capas, that something is amiss.

Trent, a quirkily earnest and precocious kid who’s in the habit of asking adults their names and “occupations,” quickly befriends another boy in the lobby. His name is Idlib (Kailen Jude), and he’s the manager’s lonely nephew, whose furtive solitude is also an evident warning sign. Prisca and Guy seem obliviously delighted with the luxury, but they’re also distracted by their troubles: the vacation is something of a last hurrah, because they’re on the verge of splitting up. (There’s also something up with Prisca’s health that they haven’t told the children.) The emotional shadows are dispelled when the manager offers the family a day trip to a secluded, secret beach—a place that he claims few guests get to see. Yet they’re joined by another family in the van that takes them there—a high-powered cardiothoracic surgeon named Charles (Rufus Sewell), his wife, Chrystal (Abbey Lee), her mother (Kathleen Chalfant), and their young daughter, Kara (Kylie Begley). (The van’s driver is played by Shyamalan himself.)

There’s a long and eerie walk from the drop-off spot through a grotto to the beach, which is indeed splendid. But then other people turn up, including a psychologist named Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird), who has severe epilepsy; her partner, Jarin (Ken Leung), who is a nurse; and also a well-known rapper called Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre). Then a corpse turns up, and then rusted-out cutlery that evokes the visits of other, earlier guests. Later, a few other odd events introduce the movie’s key idea: suddenly, the children start growing up very quickly. In a few hours, Trent looks like a big kid of eleven and Maddox looks like a high-school student. Then the adults start aging rapidly, too, and the panic that sets in is amplified when Charles gets hold of a knife, in a “ Lord of the Flies ”-like power trip, and when the group starts to experience strange, accelerated medical symptoms.

Shyamalan takes conspicuous pleasure in cannily graphic visual compositions, emphasizing significant details without isolating them from the film’s keenly observed settings, which evoke troubled states of mind in a jolting glance. (His own enthusiastic attentions in imagining and crafting the movie’s elements are infectious, and the movie is as much fun to recall as it is to watch.) The timing of reveals, the use of the soundtrack to cue offscreen events, and the deployment of basic effects to conjure inner experience express his delight in primal cinematic power. Shyamalan’s simplest and best coup de cinéma is his depiction of children aging years in the span of mere hours. What he does is change the casting, from one shot to the next—older versions of the kids are played by different actors (Thomasin McKenzie as the older Maddox, Mikaya Fisher and Eliza Scanlen as older versions of Kara, and Luca Faustino Rodriguez and Alex Wolff as growing Trents). The adults age, too, and the visual effects to show it are matched by the emotional effects of encroaching mortality. There’s some just-short-of-gore medical fantasy that veers from the simple wonder of cutaneous special effects to the macabrely skeletal to the over-the-top surgical. There’s the calamity of mental illness and an ugly element of racism that goes with it. There’s the grim realization that the beach’s supernatural powers are no accident but part of a scheme, and, as the aging process and its related agonies begin to take their toll, there are practical efforts to organize defense and resistance when the sense of a large-scale dirty trick takes hold among the survivors.

The working out of the plot and the inevitable then-there-were-none-like attrition of the group brought to and trapped on the private beach lead to some coy narrative trickery, and also to some ultimate twists that are both logical and ridiculous. “Old” takes place in a dramatic bubble that, if it’s poked a touch too hard, will quickly pop, but while it’s afloat it’s both iridescent and melancholy. The modes of loss that Shyamalan dramatizes range from the confusion of sudden adolescence and the anguish of onrushing decrepitude and death to the merely uncanny sense that unexpected pleasures are too good to be true. The economy of the premise leads Shyamalan (whose own role in the film proves exuberantly droll) to unleash images of a simple but extreme expressivity, culminating in one that I’ll be thinking about for a while—a tracking shot, on the beach, that sticks with the action at times and departs from it at others, and that, in its evocation of time in motion, reminds me of the inspirations of a modernist master of visualized time, Alain Resnais . Shyamalan reaches such a peak only once in the film, but it’s a brief high that few filmmakers ever even approach.

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Old, review: A provocative horror that brings out the best and worst in M Night Shyamalan

‘sixth sense’ maestro seems more concerned with avoiding any potential plot holes than creating wonder, article bookmarked.

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Dir: M Night Shyamalan. Starring: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abbey Lee. 15, 108 mins.

M Night Shyamalan still can’t quite shake his reputation as the king of plot twists. It doesn’t matter what he’s done in the decades since Haley Joel Osment saw dead people. The label has stuck. And it’s not quite a fair one. Shyamalan shouldn’t be defined by his twists, but by his constant unpredictability. It’s a subtle but important difference. What makes his horror films so effective – when they’re at their best, at least – is that he allows his stories to exist in a sense of perpetual tension. At any moment, the path might change. They could slip wildly into a different genre. New nightmares could emerge from any corner. What determines whether a Shyamalan film is good or bad is how he deals with that build-up of terror. Does he let it linger menacingly in the air? Or try to soothe it out of his audience’s minds with a tidy ending? Old , in that sense, brings out both the best and worst in him.

In its opening scene, we’re introduced to what should be a blissful scenario: a wealthy, nuclear family on a tropical vacation. The parents, Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps), gaze adoringly as their young children zoom around their hotel room. But the camera sits waiting on the outside, watching them through the windows, pacing up and down like a jaguar readying for the kill. What hidden torment will soon be revealed to us? Old feels like a repeat of Shyamalan’s 2004 film The Village – it’s provocative and inventive right until the point the director retreats into narrative neatness and conventional emotions.

A manager suggests the family spend the day at a private beach – one of those little-known hotspots that all holidaymakers crave. They’re soon joined by a second family – a doctor ( Rufus Sewell ), his mother (Kathleen Chalfant) and his modelesque wife (Abbey Lee), plus his young child. A little later, another couple, played by Ken Leung and Nikki Amuka-Bird, arrive. A dead body, floating facedown in the water, is the real starting point for Old ’s reign of terror. There’s a man, too, crouched in the shadows, who nervously reveals himself to be a popular rapper called Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre) – it’s unclear whether the name is intended as a joke or just a sign of cultural disconnect.

But there’s a strangeness that starts to consume these people the very second they step foot on the beach. They can’t quite put their finger on it. But their bodies simply don’t quite feel like their bodies any more. The truth is that their cells have started to age rapidly – the reason why is part of the great mystery Shyamalan knows his audience will be eager to solve. Although the film is actually an adaptation of the Swiss graphic novel Sandcastle , by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, the director has provided his own resolution to the story.

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All the implicit themes at play here – not only of our general fears of ageing, but of the doomed inevitability that our medical histories create – run strongly throughout Old . There’s a primal potency to them. But the film, just like The Village , suffers from Shyamalan’s desire to forever chase a sense of order within the universe. Sometimes this can actually be quite refreshing – Old is the rare horror where the characters are all hypercompetent – but Shyamalan’s persistent refusal to leave behind any wonder, or instability, ultimately strips Old of its staying power. He seems more concerned with avoiding any potential plot hole that might send Reddit users into a rage than he does in creating something emotionally satisfying. It’s hard to talk about his films as something more than their endings when it’s the endings that always seem to decide their fate.

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Compelling concept, so-so execution; disturbing scenes.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Not many overtly positive messages, but it does ex

Guy and Prisca try to protect their kids and calm

High body count: Characters succumb to everything

Brief shot of a woman's bare back and butt as she

Occasional "damn," "goddamn," and one use of "f--k

Adults get special cocktails when they arrive at t

Positive Messages

Not many overtly positive messages, but it does explore moral ambiguity of certain kinds of research, as well as importance of truth-telling within families and sticking together in difficult circumstances.

Positive Role Models

Guy and Prisca try to protect their kids and calm people when they can. Patricia and Jarin try to gather everyone, ask them to voice their feelings, work together. As a nurse, Jarin helps take care of everyone as they get sick and exhibit symptoms. Trent and Maddox are devoted siblings. Main cast is moderately racially/ethnically diverse, including an interracial couple (Black and Asian), a Black musician, two White families, a couple of BIPOC supporting characters. Everyone is heterosexual. Several characters have different chronic illnesses or invisible disabilities. A man seems to have early onset dementia but turns out to be schizophrenic and behaves in a way that's drawn from stereotypes about mental illness (he's homicidal).

Violence & Scariness

High body count: Characters succumb to everything from water (drowning) to one another (one person is stabbed to death, one is slashed but survives, another dies from blood poisoning). People have epileptic seizures, have emergency surgery, experience a host of other terrible things. Several dead bodies are shown; they decompose to bones and ash incredibly quickly.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief shot of a woman's bare back and butt as she undresses to swim in the nude. A woman flirts with a server. A married couple embraces and kisses. Teens hold each other; they have sex off camera and a teen girl gets pregnant.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional "damn," "goddamn," and one use of "f--king."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults get special cocktails when they arrive at the resort.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan 's Old is a thriller that explores what happens when vacationing strangers are stranded on a beautiful beach that ages them at a remarkable rate. Like all of Shyamalan's movies, there are plot twists and turns, as well as a sustained sense of peril throughout. There's a considerably high body count, with several disturbing scenes of dead bodies/characters getting sick, a surprise pregnancy and birth, emergency surgery, and the implications of children growing into young adults in a matter of hours. Various characters have chronic illnesses that manifest themselves in frightening ways. While the only sex in the movie takes place off camera, there's kissing and a scene of a woman stripping to swim in the nude (her bare back and butt are visible). Language is fairly tame except for a few uses of "damn," "goddamn," and one "f--king." Adults get special cocktails. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (14)
Kids say (42)

Based on 14 parent reviews

Another great movie that makes us think from M. Knight Shyamalan

A wildly underrated thiller, what's the story.

M. Night Shyamalan 's creepy mystery/thriller OLD, based on the graphic novel Sandcastle , follows four groups of vacationing strangers who are visiting their resort's special private beach together for the day when they realize that something is going irrevocably wrong. A family of four -- dad Guy ( Gael García Bernal ), mom Prisca (Vicky Krieps), 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton), and 6-year-old Trent (Nolan River) -- arrives at a tropical resort in an unspecified location. The manager recommends an exclusive excursion to a private nature preserve's nearby beach. They join a wealthy multigenerational family that includes an English chief of surgery ( Rufus Sewell ), his elderly mother (Kathleen Chalfant), trophy wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee), and their 5-year-old girl, Kara. They also realize that there's a single man there, whom tween Maddox identifies as rapper Mid-Sized Sedan ( Aaron Pierre ). Soon after, young Trent discovers a dead woman in the water: the fellow resort-goer who'd gone to the beach with Mid-Sized Sedan earlier in the day. A final married couple -- nurse Jarin ( Ken Leung ) and psychologist Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) -- appear amid the chaos, and it's soon clear that the beach has unthinkable effects on everyone. They're all aging approximately two years per hour, leading the kids to quickly morph into teen versions of Maddox ( Thomasin McKenzie ), Trent ( Alex Wolff ), and Kara ( Eliza Scanlen ).

Is It Any Good?

Shyamalan's thriller has a strong cast and an initially riveting concept, but it's uneven, and most of the best parts are revealed in the trailer. The performances are serviceable -- particularly Wolff, who's become an expert at the emotional range necessary for creepy horror/psychological thrillers. McKenzie is also notably good at portraying someone who's aged too quickly and is having trouble processing all of her complicated feelings. The adults range in effectiveness, with the striking Pierre (who's excellent in The Underground Railroad ) having little to do as the confused and quiet rapper, Sewell chewing up the scenery as an arrogant surgeon, and Bernal and Krieps trying to telegraph how a marriage on the rocks would react when faced with an unthinkable crisis. Stand-outs include Leung and Amuka-Bird, who play the story's sole likable and stable couple.

As in all of his films, Shyamalan also cast himself in a notable, more-than-cameo role, and, while it was predictable, he should have given himself an even smaller part. The twists here, once the titular premise is revealed, are underwhelming (and one is as obvious as Chekhov's gun). There's no gasp-worthy Sixth Sense or The Others moment, which is fine, but the "aha!" doesn't even matter much, because audiences may no longer be invested in the outcome. The best, freakiest parts of the movie rely mostly on the kids' accelerated growth, along with the physiological abnormalities that different characters face while aging a lot in one day (not a spoiler; it's right there in the title). Old ranks somewhere in the bottom half of Shyamalan's filmography, but even so it's worth a look -- if only to see the kids fast-forward into teens.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Old . How much takes place on screen vs. off? How does that affect the way you feel about it? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How does Old compare to Shyamalan's other movies? What are some of his movies' signature elements?

In this story, how do the diverse characters work together toward a common goal? Do they succeed? What do you think about the outcome?

Who, if anyone, do you consider a role model in the movie? What character strengths are on display?

Movie Details

In theaters : July 23, 2021
On DVD or streaming : October 19, 2021
Cast : Gael Garcia Bernal , Vicky Krieps , Embeth Davidtz , Thomasin McKenzie , Alex Wolff
Director : M. Night Shyamalan
Inclusion Information : Latino actors, Female actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Thriller
Topics : Brothers and Sisters
Run time : 108 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : strong violence, disturbing images, suggestive content, partial nudity and brief strong language
Last updated : December 27, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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DVD & Streaming
Drama , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

July 23, 2021
Gael García Bernal as Guy; Vicky Krieps as Prisca; Rufus Sewell as Charles; Abbey Lee as Chrystal; Aaron Pierre as Mid-Sized Sedan; Ken Leung as Jarin; Nikki Amuka-Bird as Patricia; Nolan River as Trent Aged 6; Alexa Swinton as Maddox Aged 11; Emun Elliott as Adult Trent; Embeth Davidtz as Adult Maddox

Home Release Date

October 19, 2021
M. Night Shyamalan

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Movie Review

If you land a room at the Anamika Resort, what with its sun-kissed beaches, beautiful vistas and luxurious rooms, you can count yourself as either very rich or very lucky.

For the Cappa family, it was the latter.

Prisca Cappa happened to fill out a sweepstakes entry she got at the drugstore and nearly fell over when the notice online said they had won. Now she and her husband Guy are sipping specially made resort drinks, and her kids, Maddox and Trent, are squealing and giggling while chasing each other on the beach.

By breakfast of their second day in paradise, the Cappas’ good luck pops up once more. A smiling resort manager stops by their table and offers them a trip to a private beach on a secluded side of the island. “I only recommend it to certain guests,” he whispers with a wink. And the Cappas jump at the chance.

It’s just them and another family who clamber into the small resort bus for the trip (another lucky couple come a bit later in the morning). And as they near the special spot—chained off and labeled Nature Reserve —the bus occupants all realize that this is indeed a rare and wonderful treat.

The beach area is an incredible stretch of pristine sand, completely surrounded by enormous rock formations and the clearest, bluest water and sky they’ve ever seen. You can only reach the beach itself by edging your way throuh a narrow cravace in the rocks: a short trip on foot that feels snatched right out of an exotic romance novel.

There’s only one other person on the entire beach—a man who 11-year-old Maddox quickly recognizes as the famous rapper Mid-Sized Sedan. That unexpected celebrity treat alone just transformed this into something beyond imagination for her.

But a number of things about this beach are beyond imagination—stuff of nightmares, not dreams. There’s actually something very strange happening to the people there at this very moment—cellular shifts and changes that they don’t even feel. In fact, it’s not until a dead naked body floats into the cove that people really start sitting up to take notice that something strange is happening.

By the time 6- and 11-year-old Trent and Maddox suddenly begin looking like they’ve aged to 11 and 16, everyone is convinced that they need to get off this bizarre beach. But by then they’ve already realized that no one can leave. Go too far in any direction and you pass out cold.

It becomes obvious that they’re not the first people that have been deposited on this stretch of sand and surf. Was it on purpose? Will they all grow quickly old and die here? And how much time do they actually have?

Prisca Cappa suddenly realizes that she isn’t very lucky at all.

Positive Elements

As people on the beach age very quickly, that acceleration and the growing danger puts life itself, and the decisions we make in that life, in a new perspective. Prisca and Guy were actually moving toward separating before taking the trip, for instance. But as the day on the beach winds on and life runs by them so quickly, they see the foolishness of their former arguments and the value of the relationships they treasure, including their own.

We also see that people’s natures become more pronounced with age and danger. One individual, seemingly suffering from dementia, becomes more and more hateful. Others become more prone to nurture and comfort people in their small group. And some are willing to risk everything to save these rapidly aging vacationers. An appearance-driven woman talks about a past love that she tossed aside because he was not handsome, but now that she is aging and changing herself, her thoughts turn to his sincerity and loving nature.

Spiritual Elements

There are no real discussions of faith here. But, without giving too much away, I can say that the film does raise questions of philosophical ethics, wondering if it is moral to sacrifice a few for the greater good of all. And Old decidedly lands on the side of the sanctity of life.

Sexual Content

A young woman on a beach, begins stripping off her clothes. We see her in her underwear while a man watches from behind her. Then we take on his perspective and watch as she removes the rest of her clothes and walks into the surf. (She’s fully nude from the rear, with some side breast.) Later, that woman washes up on shore, dead. We see her naked from the back once more as someone drags her ashore, but then she’s kept out of the camera’s view.

In other scenes, a number of women wear bikinis on the beach. A trim wife flaunts her bikini-clad form and flirts with a waiter in front of her husband. Young Maddox grows from a tween into a full grown woman who has to change into a rather revealing bikini.

Six-year-old Trent quickly ages, too. And he and a girl named Kara become close as their bodies and minds quickly age. We see them talking and touching hands, off by themselves. Then they rejoin the others and Kara is obviously very pregnant. Prisca is aghast that Trent didn’t remember what she had told him about boy and girl sexuality. And he is surprised because, “It was only one time.”

We find out that Prisca was having an affair with another man. (Though we never see them together.)

Violent Content

A number of people die on the beach, some from the natural effects of accelerated time, others from murderous intent.

A doctor named Charles, for instance, is a man curdled by his own racism, barely hidden in the best of times. With the onset of dementia, however, that foul nature is set loose. He attacks several people with a knife. He attacks a Black man, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest. We see the bloody wounds and dead body. He also slashes both Guy and Prisca repeatedly on the arms and back, but because of the accelerated time those slashed open wounds instantly heal.

In saner moments, Charles removes a rapidly growing tumor from someone’s side. But because of the instant healing skin, two people must hold the cut flesh open while Charles eventually slices out the tumor—that’s now grown to the size of a cantaloupe. (We see the initial incision, but most of the actual operation takes place out of the camera’s view.)

Two different people try to swim out into the ocean, but both black out and drown, and their dead bodies float back to shore. Because of a blood disease, a man has a perpetually bloody nose. We see a woman have several grand mal seizures. One particularly violent episode leaves her dead and foaming at the mouth. An elderly woman dies of a heart attack.

People black out from “intense cranial pressure.” A pet dog dies. Someone passes out and falls from a great height to her death. (We don’t see the body hit the beach below.) A young woman gives birth, but the baby dies very quickly. Someone has their clothing caught on a coral outcropping and almost drowns.

A woman with a calcium deficiency breaks her arm, but it instantly heals in a crooked twist. She begins flailing around, breaking all her arms and legs repeatedly against rocky surfaces and healing instantly—twisting herself into a contorted knot—before dying. A man is slashed with a rusty knife and the poison quickly spreads through his body, killing him in an anguish. We find out that hundreds of people have died on the beach in the past.

Crude or Profane Language

There’s one lone and almost shocking f-word in the context of the dialogue that sports a few uses of “d–n,” one use of “h—” and several misuses of God’s name. (God and “d–n” are combined once.)

Drug and Alcohol Content

We find out that people are given certain experimental drugs mixed into alcoholic beverages. We see several people imbibing. We see a lab full of chemicals and drugs.

Other Negative Elements

We see the bones of a body that has quickly decomposed in a matter of hours. Prisca and Guy argue loudly in an adjoining room. It’s obvious that those arguments disturb their kids. That’s reinforced when later, a suddenly matured and angry Trent declares that he wants to marry Kara, “And we’re never gonna yell at each other and we are never getting divorced!”

Director M. Night Shyamalan has made no secret of his inspirations for the movie Old. One was a graphic novel called “Sandcastle,” that sported a very similar family-holiday-on-a-mysterious-beach storyline. And the second was a TV show that most everyone knows. “When I read the graphic novel, I thought ‘Oh, this is a long form Twilight Zone ,’ Shyamalan said in a GamesRadar interview. And that influence is readily apparent.

There’s an eerie strangeness here that grows out of an otherwise mundane trip to the beach–stretching its creepy flippers and water wings and getting darker and more bizarre as the story unfolds. But the movie is more than just its horrifying conceit. Old asks questions about the things that drive us: our virtues and vanities, our passions and secreted-away poisons.

Some might look at this pic and balk at what they see as “anti-science” grumbles. Others will step away with thoughts of family and the precious need to make better choices humming in their brains. There’s definitely more to this creative pic than first meets the eye.

That’s not to say that Old is perfect. The movie’s fleshy moments and bloody things will mark this beach as off limits for many curious families. But for those who deign to brave the perils and let their feet sink into the surf-soaked sand, it’s an interesting excursion. Or you might say, It’s a dimension not only of sight and sound … but of mind.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps in Old.

Old review – M Night Shyamalan’s beach thriller is all washed up

Gael Garcia Bernal and Vicky Krieps are all at sea in this holiday-from-hell drama

T here’s only a certain extent to which a director can flirt ironically with the clunky storytelling of a Tales of the Unexpected episode before it stops being ironic and starts being just ponderous and mannered. And with his accelerated-ageing mystery movie Old , M Night Shyamalan is long past that point.

Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps both seem ill at ease in the roles of a husband and wife hoping for one last family holiday at an elite and secretive resort. Not surprising, since they are constantly having the kind of conversations that are more about dumping exposition than they are about shaping credible characters. And if we can’t believe the characters, how are we meant to accept the film’s central premise?

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Movie Review – Old (2021)

October 25, 2021 by Robert Kojder

Old , 2021.

Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Alex Wolff, Thomasin McKenzie, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Eliza Scanlen, Aaron Pierre, Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliott, Alexa Swinton, Nolan River, Luca Faustino Rodriguez, Kylie Begley, Mikaya Fisher, Kailen Jude, M. Night Shyamalan, Matthew Shear, Jeffrey Holsman, and Daniel Ison.

A thriller about a family on a tropical holiday who discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly reducing their entire lives into a single day.

As per usual, writer and director M. Night Shyamalan makes a cameo appearance. Here in Old , he portrays a paradise island driver transporting a carefully selected group to an exclusive beach. For those unaware of the film’s basic premise, the location turns out to be a magical spot capable of aging its inhabitants rapidly. One hour is equal to about two years worth of lifespan. Naturally, the stressful situation gives the characters much to panic about, but it’s extra sinister knowing that the director himself is stepping in front of the camera to bring these guests to a living nightmare (with mysterious forces at work that won’t let them leave).

Given the setup of cameras and acknowledgments of an associated pharmaceutical company, it’s also easily deduced that these people have been specifically chosen for a purpose. Going in, most will likely be trying to figure out the filmmaker’s latest twist, and while I will say there is one, this time, it doesn’t feel sprung on viewers in a manner that’s meant to be shocking. That’s not to say his writing is slipping (I don’t know if he can go much lower than some of his most extreme career low points) or that the reveal here is lame, just that he is a lot more liberal with clues and allusions. Perhaps it’s also because Old is not entirely the brainchild of M. Night Shyamalan (it’s based on the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters), this time his goals go beyond pulling one over on the audience. Old is arguably the most ambitious film M. Night Shyamalan has made thus far, which only makes the missteps a good deal more frustrating.

The good news is that M. Night Shyamalan is also having an infectious blast exploring the horrors of aging and the importance of quality time spent together. It’s no surprise that much of the running time is spent watching these people trying to escape while unearthing details about what supernatural juju they are dealing with, but when one of them ponders whether it’s even worth it to keep trying, there’s a part of oneself that’s almost inclined to agree. Any living thing’s final seconds alive should be a happy moment in some capacity. That sentiment is doubly felt considering most couples and families brought out to this secret beach are dysfunctional somehow, whether it be infidelity or simply not getting along. Another reoccurring factor seems to be that most of these people have either a mental or physical illness, ranging from tumors to seizures to dementia to anger issues. They also appear to be wealthy, typically holding jobs in highly regarded occupations. As you can imagine, all of that set free into one setting under distressing circumstances paves the way for hostility and more fighting.

In fairness, Old probably has too many characters for its own good (there’s a reason I’ve barely bothered to actually talk about them, as going down the list saying something about each one would probably take up an entire review’s worth of text). It’s not a matter of the story itself becoming complicated due to having so many clashing personalities, as Old is actually relatively straightforward, but that nearly every significant moment (and this movie pretty much flies from set piece to set piece across its 110 minutes duration) has its emotional heft undercut from, ironically, not having enough time to spend with the characters. Just because they are stuck constantly aging doesn’t mean they can’t be further developed. As a result of simply too much, there’s not a single death that’s impactful here (including one that should be a layup to generate some kind of emotional response yet fails).

One can’t help shaking the feeling that M. Night Shyamalan would have had a more substantial experience (symbolically, thematically, and in terms of characterization) by sticking to the primary family of the narrative. They are husband and wife Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, respectively) and their two children Trent and Maddox (played by various actors as the characters go from early childhood to late life). Most notable are two of the most impressive young stars around, Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie embodying teenage versions of the aforementioned kids, mainly since the film is also concerned with exploring the acceleration of their brains and craving new experiences that come with aging. In the case of Trent, puberty and hormones affect him with the force of a shotgun blast (a friend he also makes ages alongside him, leading to a sexual encounter followed up by something else insane and entertaining), and his emotional maturity initially doesn’t seem to be keeping up. It also makes for some of the trademark awkward line delivery of M. Night Shyamalan movies to have some purpose, although, for the most part, it’s distracting how wooden and stiff everyone talks and remains something that needs to go from anything he does moving forward.

The supporting cast is fun, although more of an unnecessary distraction (self-absorbed beauty queens are reckoning with fading sexiness culminating in some deliciously grotesque body horror, a knife-wielding maniac whose frequent attacks uncovers any injuries sustained will automatically heal, and some others that probably should have been cut entirely). Whenever Old is fixated on marital struggles, making peace, the effects of children speedily growing up into fully grown adults, and the litany of crazy scenarios that arise, it’s admittedly thrilling and easier to swallow the flaws within the storytelling execution. Old is probably as good as it’s going to get when you take M. Night Shyamalan’s numerous filmmaking idiosyncrasies and toss them into a blender with pathos regarding time.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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Review: M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Old’ isn’t so bad, except when it’s terrible

Aaron Pierre, Vicky Krieps, Gael García Bernal and Abbey Lee in the movie 'Old.'

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

Watching “Old” will take about four years off your life — or just under two hours, depending on which way you’re reading your trusty temporal-wormhole conversion chart. The movie, you see, follows a group of unfortunate vacationers who get stuck on a private beach, where they fall victim to an alarming, irreversible, inexplicable process of accelerated aging. Did I say inexplicable? How silly of me. This is a thriller written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan , after all, which means there’s always an explanation or two or 200. It’s a wonder he isn’t still explaining it as the credits roll.

By the time they do, you may find yourself both exasperated and tickled by what you’ve seen: a gleaming slab of high-end, high-concept summer trash that really does play strange games with your perceptions and maybe even your tastes. “Old” grabs you right away, starts losing you at the half-hour mark, pulls you back in with some agreeably bonkers set pieces, drags you through a tedious closing stretch and finally leaves you in an oddly charitable mood: Say, that wasn’t so bad, except when it was terrible. It’s no small accomplishment. Some Shyamalan films can take years to start looking better with age (see: “The Village,” or maybe don’t), but “Old” pulls it off in record time.

That’s a good thing, since the clock is already ticking for Prisca (Vicky Krieps) and Guy (Gael García Bernal), the attractive, unhappily married couple we see arriving at a tropical island resort in the opening scenes. They’re calling it quits and taking one last family vacation together with their kids, Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and Trent (Nolan River), who are 11 and 6, but not for long. Everyone’s too distracted to notice the faintly creepy vibes at the resort, one of those all-inclusive getaways with stunning ocean views, personalized cocktails on arrival and a van (driven by Shyamalan himself, in one of his more prominent signature on-screen roles) that will chauffeur specially hand-selected guests to a secret cove on another side of the island.

Nikki Amuka-Bird and Ken Leung in the movie 'Old.'

It’s here that Guy, Prisca and the kids find themselves one afternoon, along with several other guests. While they have names, it may be best to identify each of them by the occupation and/or single personality trait that Shyamalan has saddled them with: There’s a rude doctor (Rufus Sewell), his beauty-obsessed wife (Abbey Lee), their cute daughter (Kylie Begley) and her sweet grandmother (Kathleen Chalfant). There’s a soulful rapper (Aaron Pierre), a helpful nurse (Ken Leung) and his perhaps over-helpful psychiatrist wife (Nikki Amuka-Bird). And then there’s the corpse that washes up that afternoon, the first sign that something on this beach is very, very wrong.

More signs follow. A small tumor inflates to the size of a grapefruit within seconds. Digitally rendered wrinkles appear on the older travelers’ faces, while cuts and wounds heal with alarming rapidity. Maddox and Trent are suddenly recast with older actors (Thomasin McKenzie and Luca Faustino Rodriguez), like wee moppets suddenly morphing into angsty teens on “Days of Our Lives.” As you’d expect and perhaps even want from a slasher movie where Time itself is wielding the sickle, the body count escalates fast. They’ll all be dead within days or even hours, they realize, and whenever they try to leave — to exit through the surrounding caves or swim past the heavy currents — the beach has an unnerving way of yanking them back.

And “Old,” adapted from Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters’ graphic novel “Sandcastle,” is just getting started. How to describe the long, noisy, stabby, increasingly unhinged passages that follow? “Gilligan’s Island” as reimagined by Luis Buñuel? Ed Wood’s “L’Avventura”? “The Curious Case of Benjamin Beach Bum”? I’m spitballing here, and so, on some level, is Shyamalan. Burrowing into the outlandish biomedical implications of his premise, he pulls off one or two amusingly grisly sequences, at least one of which suggests that even premature aging has its undeniable uses. He steeps his characters in a familiar, quintessentially Shyamalanian fog of panic and paranoia, in which they struggle to believe, let alone explain, the extraordinary phenomena transpiring before their eyes.

What he doesn’t do is come close to generating so much as a flurry of real suspense or terror — a failing that can be chalked up to the surprising ineptitude of the filmmaking. This is dispiriting to report, given that Shyamalan’s undersung signature as a storyteller has always been his superior eye, his skill at patiently building tension and suspense inside the frame. Even when he loses his narrative way or gets bogged down in metaphysical portent, his visual command seldom abandons him.

Until now. Shyamalan seems weirdly at a loss for how to stage action in this confined yet open space, and his actors are often left standing around in stiff, awkward formations. (The fast-mutating ensemble also includes Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliott, Alex Wolff, Eliza Scanlen and Mikaya Fisher.) The camera lurches around these sandy minimalist environs, whipping up flurries of psychodrama but never quite finding the ideal placement. The dialogue is even clumsier, all forehead-smacking exposition (“Our cells are aging very fast here!” “The dog’s dead!”) in a script that tends to tell twice as much as it shows. In trying to capture a group state of mental and physiological free fall, the filmmaker merely exposes the limits of his own control.

So why, in spite of all that, does “Old” still inspire a spasm of retroactive goodwill? Maybe because after the murky, misbegotten “Glass,” it’s nice to see Shyamalan doing a deranged one-off, taking the movie equivalent of an invigorating stroll in the sun. Maybe because the story concludes not with a shocking, credulity-straining twist, but rather an explanation that, in light of all that has preceded it, feels curiously coherent, even intuitive. Maybe because of the wondrous Vicky Krieps, whose lovely, breathy understatement finds expressive notes that few of her co-stars can match. (Look out for her in the upcoming “Bergman Island,” a vastly superior movie about an estranged couple on an island where reality begins to blur.)

Or maybe it’s just that “Old,” a story of collective bodily breakdown arriving in the midst of a pandemic, builds to an obvious but appreciably stirring note. It acknowledges the reality of just how quickly time passes and how cruelly loved ones can be ripped away. Maybe it’s true that life is too short for bad movies. Or maybe it’s too short not to take what pleasure in them you can.

Rating: PG-13, for strong violence, disturbing images, suggestive content, partial nudity and brief strong language Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes Playing: Opens July 23 in general release

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Let’s Talk About the Twist Ending of M. Night Shyamalan’s Old

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

From the moment The Sixth Sense blew audiences’ minds with a shocking conclusion so well conceived it helped mainstream the phrase “no spoilers, please” — M. Night Shyamalan ’s name has been synonymous with the twist ending . Old , his latest film, recalls the strengths the auteur first displayed on The Sixth Sense : An advanced ability to hook viewers with a mystifying premise plus the capacity to explore big themes like mortality and regret in the space of a fright. Old also exemplifies the faults in the director’s later efforts: a penchant for problematic portrayals of mental health and rudderless camerawork in service of a surprise that doesn’t feel earned.

Old begins simply: An apparently perfect family composed of mother Prisca (Vicky Krieps), father Guy (Gael García Bernal), their 6-year old son Trent (Nolan River), and their 11-year old daughter Maddox (Alexa Swinton), travel to a paradisal island for a restive vacation. The island seems perfect: The hotel staff throws a welcome party, complimentary cocktails are offered, and the calendar is stuffed with events like parasailing, dance classes, etc. Trent even makes quick friends with a lonely local boy Idlib (Kailen Jude), who possesses valuable secrets concerning the island.

The affable resort manager tells the family of a private picturesque beach to visit. Upon arriving at the seaside oasis, however, not only do the family’s underlying pains spring to the surface, the sandy supernatural landscape seems to cause them to age rapidly. (Two years every hour, to be exact.) Trapped on the beach with two other families, surrounded by natural barriers, the imprisoned vacationers engage in a fight for survival against the elements and one another. In the horrors of Old is an imperative message: Savor life’s every minute.

If only the film’s ending lived up to that lofty mandate. Instead, the slow burn of a journey the characters take is more enlightening than the eventual twist. Along the way, we discover that Prisca, diagnosed with a benign tumor, cheated on Guy and the couple are nearing a divorce; within earshot of their children, each accuse the other of blowing up the marriage. But on the beach they do grow closer again, leaning on each other as Guy goes blind and Prisca grows deaf. By their death of old age, which they reach in a span of a day by the seaside, they barely remember what they were fighting about, deciding that it wasn’t so important in the context of their lifelong love.

A violent, schizophrenic cardiothoracic surgeon named Charles is also confined to the beach — providing a distasteful albeit common trope of a character who appears in even Shyamalan’s finest films. But Charles isn’t the most intriguing member of his family. Rather his vain, bombshell wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee) is the one to watch, the physical wear and tear of aging propelling her to a vicious mental breakdown, devolving to a kind of monstrous cave dweller. Is the horror filmmaker making a grand statement about ephemeral beauty standards? If so, then why does Chrystal become the movie’s single victim of blatant body horror, Suspiria style? (In another, more emotionally horrifying scene, a pregnant woman gives birth to a baby who, because of the time-warping nonsense of the beach, dies with a minute of being alive on the beach.)

Shyamalan undercuts many of his most fascinating plotlines in several mind-numbing missteps, namely by neatly sweeping away any lingering questions from the audience. It’s revealed that, yes, other families have died on this beach — they are why rusted silverware, clothes, and notebooks could be found buried in the sands. One found journal, replete with hand-sketched pictures, plainly explains why they’re unable to escape: The surrounding rocks are magnetized, somehow causing black-out headaches to anyone who dares to traverse them. (Between Old and F9 , magnets are becoming an essential 2021 plot device. At least with Old, there are no hints that we’re getting some larger, Shyamalan cinematic universe.)

But it’s Trent’s sneaking suspicion that the vacationers are being watched from a hillside that left me groaning into the ether. We learn that the driver who first took them to the beach — played by Shyamalan himself — has been spying on them the whole time. He works for a band of scientists who have been using the beach to try out various pharmaceutical drugs on sick, at-risk humans in an accelerated environment. (Each family, it turns out, included a member with a preexisting health condition. The test subjects’ rapid aging allowed the pharmaceutical companies to discover the “lifelong” effects of a drug in no time at all.) The families on the beach were merely guinea pigs.

The now adult Trent and Maddox, the only two survivors by the movie’s end, eventually escape from the beach thanks to a clue from Idlib, who tells them to swim through the (non-magnetized?) coral reefs. They arrive on the mainland to expose the nefarious scientist to the world, but nothing in their final scene, of Trent and Maddox helicoptering home to their aunt, is as emotionally satisfying as their time on the beach. (Why do these two adults need to be entrusted to their aunt? How, exactly, did they blow the whistle on the pharma baddies?) By inserting himself into the narrative, a common technique for Shyamalan, is the director poking fun at his reputation for caring more for puzzles than characters? I don’t think he entirely knows. He has the premise but not the experiential grounding to stick a philosophical landing.

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Movie Review: ‘IF,’ imperfect but charming, may have us all checking under beds for our old friends

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Cailey Fleming, left, and the character Blue, voiced by Steve Carell, in a scene from “IF.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows the character Blossom, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, left, and Cailey Fleming in a scene from “IF.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Ryan Reynolds, from left, Cailey Fleming, the character Blue, voiced by Steve Carell, and the Blossom, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, in a scene from “IF.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Cailey Fleming, right, and Ryan Reynolds in a scene from “IF.” (Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Cailey Fleming, left, and Ryan Reynolds in a scene from “IF.” (Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount Pictures via AP)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Cailey Fleming in a scene from “IF.” (Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount Pictures via AP)

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How do you make a kid’s movie that appeals not only to the kids, but the adults sitting next to them? Most movies try to achieve this by throwing in a layer of wink-wink pop culture references that’ll earn a few knowing laughs from parents but fly nicely over the heads of the young ones.

So let’s credit John Krasinski for not taking the easy way out. Writing and directing (and acting in, and producing) his new kid’s movie, “IF,” Krasinski is doing his darndest to craft a story that works organically no matter the age, with universal themes — imagination, fear, memory — that just hit different depending on who you are.

Or maybe sometimes, they hit the same — because Krasinski, who wanted to make a movie his kids could watch (unlike his “Quiet Place” thrillers), is also telling us that sometimes, we adults are more connected to our childhood minds than we think. A brief late scene that actually doesn’t include children at all is one of the most moving moments of the film – but I guess I would say that, being an adult and all.

There’s only one conundrum: “IF,” a story about imaginary friends (get it?) that blends live action with digital creatures and some wonderful visual effects (and cinematography by Janusz Kaminski), has almost too many riches at its disposal. And we’re not even talking about the Who’s Who of Hollywood figures voicing whimsical creatures: Steve Carell, Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper, Jon Stewart, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Maya Rudolph, Emily Blunt, Sam Rockwell, and the late Louis Gosset Jr. are just a few who join live stars Ryan Reynolds and Cailey Fleming. Imagining a table read makes the head spin.

Director Paul Schrader poses for portrait photographs for the film 'Oh, Canada', at the 77th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 17, 2024. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

The issue is simply that with all the artistic resources and refreshing ideas here, there’s a fuzziness to the storytelling itself. Just who is actually doing what and why they’re doing it — what are the actual mechanics of this half-human, half-digital world? — occasionally gets lost in the razzle-dazzle.

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows the character Blossom, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, left, and Cailey Fleming in a scene from "IF." (Paramount Pictures via AP)

Blossom, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Cailey Fleming in a scene from “IF.” (Paramount Pictures via AP)

But, still, everything looks so darned lovely, starting with the pretty, brownstone-lined streets of Brooklyn Heights in New York City, where our story is chiefly set. We begin in flashback, with happy scenes of main character Bea as a little girl, playing with her funloving parents (Krasinski and Catharine Daddario). But soon we’re sensing Mom may be sick — she’s wearing telltale headscarves and hats — and it becomes clear what’s happening.

Bea is 12 when she arrives with a suitcase at her grandmother’s Brooklyn apartment, filled with her old paint sets and toys. Grandma (Fiona Shaw, in a deeply warm performance) offers the art supplies, but Bea tells her: “I don’t really do that anymore.”

She says something similar to her father, visiting him in the hospital (it takes a few minutes to figure out that they’ve come to New York, from wherever they live, so Dad can have some sort of heart surgery.) He tells Bea he’s not sick, just broken, and needs to be fixed. Hoping to keep her sense of fun alive, he jokes around, but she says sternly: “Life doesn’t always have to be fun.”

And then the creatures start appearing, visible only to Bea.

We first meet a huge roly-poly bundle of purple fur called “Blue” (Carell.) Yes, we said he was purple. The kid who named him was color-blind. These, we soon understand, are IFs —imaginary friends — who’ve been cut loose, no longer needed. There’s also a graceful butterfly called Blossom who resembles Betty Boop (Waller-Bridge). A winsome unicorn (Blunt). A smooth-voiced elderly teddy bear (Gossett Jr., in a sweet turn.) We’ll meet many more.

Supervising all of them is Cal (Ryan Reynolds.) An ornery type, at least to begin with, he’s feeling rather overworked, trying to find new kids for these IFs. But now that Bea has found Cal living atop her grandmother’s apartment building, she’s the chosen helper.

The pair — Reynolds and the sweetly serious Fleming have a winning chemistry — head to Coney Island on the subway, where Cal shows Bea the IF “retirement home.” This is, hands down, the most delightful part of the movie. Filmed at an actual former retirement residence, the scene has the look down pat: generic wall-to-wall carpeting, activity rooms for CG-creature group therapy sessions, the nail salon. And then the nonagenarian teddy bear gives Bea a key bit of advice: all she need do is use her imagination to transform the place. And she does, introducing everything from a spiffy new floor to a swimming pool with Esther Williams-style dancers to a rock concert with Tina Turner.

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Cailey Fleming, right, and Ryan Reynolds in a scene from "IF." (Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount Pictures via AP)

Cailey Fleming and Ryan Reynolds in a scene from “IF.” (Jonny Cournoyer/Paramount Pictures via AP)

The movie moves on to Bea’s matchmaking efforts. A tough nut to crack is Benjamin (Alan Kim), an adorable boy in the hospital who favors screens and seems to have trouble charging his own imagination (spoiler alert: that’ll get fixed).

There are segments here that feel like they go on far too long, particularly when Bea, Cal and Blue track down Blue’s now-adult “kid” (Bobby Moynihan of “Saturday Night Live”), now nervously preparing for a professional presentation.

Still, the idea that adults could still make use of their old “IFs” at difficult times — and, to broaden the thought, summon their dormant sense of whimsy, as a closing scene captures nicely — is a worthwhile one. And by movie’s end, one can imagine more than one adult in the multiplex running home, checking under the bed, hoping to find a trusted old friend.

“IF,” a Paramount release, has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association “for thematic elements and mild language.” Running time: 104 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

Movie Review: ‘IF,’ imperfect but charming, may have us all checking under beds for our old friends

H ow do you make a kid’s movie that appeals not only to the kids, but the adults sitting next to them? Most movies try to achieve this by throwing in a layer of wink-wink pop culture references that’ll earn a few knowing laughs from parents but fly nicely over the heads of the young ones.

But, still, everything looks so darned lovely, starting with the pretty, brownstone-lined streets of Brooklyn Heights in New York City, where our story is chiefly set. We begin in flashback, with happy scenes of main character Bea as a little girl, playing with her funloving parents (Krasinski and Catharine Daddario). But soon we’re sensing Mom may be sick — she's wearing telltale headscarves and hats — and it becomes clear what’s happening.

She says something similar to her father, visiting him in the hospital (it takes a few minutes to figure out that they've come to New York, from wherever they live, so Dad can have some sort of heart surgery.) He tells Bea he's not sick, just broken, and needs to be fixed. Hoping to keep her sense of fun alive, he jokes around, but she says sternly: “Life doesn’t always have to be fun.”

And then the creatures start appearing, visible only to Bea.

Supervising all of them is Cal (Ryan Reynolds.) An ornery type, at least to begin with, he's feeling rather overworked, trying to find new kids for these IFs. But now that Bea has found Cal living atop her grandmother’s apartment building, she’s the chosen helper.

“IF,” a Paramount release, has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association “for thematic elements and mild language.” Running time: 104 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press

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Arthur Hughes plays the title character in Hulu's four-part series, Shardlake . Martin Mlaka/Hulu hide caption

Arthur Hughes plays the title character in Hulu's four-part series, Shardlake .

We live in discordant times, which may be why the turbulent reign of King Henry VIII has enjoyed a revival over the last few years. We've had the gleefully trashy TV series The Tudors , the Tony-winning Broadway musical Six and – at the high end of achievement – Hilary Mantel 's trilogy about Henry's right-hand-man Thomas Cromwell.

Now comes the new Hulu mystery series Shardlake, based on C.J. Sansom's first novel in a series about a crime-solving lawyer in 16th-century England. As a rule, I hate historical mysteries and I feared that Shardlake would serve up the Tudor era's usual cavalcade of castles, codpieces, clopping horses and quasi-Shakespearean lingo – "Prithee, stop, sirrah!" But to my surprise this odd, beautifully acted show pulled me in.

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Arthur Hughes stars as Matthew Shardlake, a bitingly intense London barrister known for his brains and for the curved spine that leads the world to undervalue him. One who sees his value is the king's minister Thomas Cromwell – played by a domineering Sean Bean – a dangerous man who's busy stripping the assets of the Catholic church and claiming them for the Crown.

As the action begins, Cromwell has just had his envoy murdered in a coastal monastery. He sends Shardlake to find the killer and, in the process, to find evidence of monkish malfeasance that will justify seizing the monastery's holdings. To keep Shardlake on his toes, he sends along one of his henchmen, brash, impulsive Jack Barak. That's Anthony Boyle, who plays John Wilkes Booth in the current series Manhunt .

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Because the monastery is filled with Catholic monks who hate the Protestant king, things are tricky there from the get-go. Not only do Shardlake and Jack keep being lied to, but the murders are just beginning. As they investigate, they both grow smitten with a servant – played by Ruby Ashbourne Serkis – and they start to develop one of those classic detective story partnerships between a brilliant misfit and an earthier, ordinary guy.

Now, I don't want to oversell Shardlake . As a historical show, it lacks the sweeping grandeur of Shogun , another period drama that reminds us that Protestants and Catholics were once at each other's throats. Nor does it approach Mantel's richly vibrant vision of Henry VIII's England, with its divisions and hatreds and social climbing.

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Yet it has a strong historical atmosphere, especially in showing how Shardlake and Jack find themselves squeezed by powerful forces around them. Both believe they're doing the right thing in helping Cromwell seize Catholic wealth, thinking it should go to England's countless poor people. At the same time, they come to realize that, in Cromwell, they're working for an utterly ruthless politician, one who may have played a key role in setting up Anne Boleyn, whose beheading figures into the plot here.

The show's finest moments lie in the byplay between its lead actors, played by two of Britain's rising stars. As the cocky Jack – a lad risen from the streets and terrified of sinking back – Boyle deftly straddles the line between likable and not. You see why he's been cast to star as a charismatic IRA leader in the upcoming TV adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe 's book Say Nothing .

Jack's extroversion pairs nicely with the tightly wound Shardlake, whose smile is almost a wince. Hughes was the first actor with a disability to ever play Richard III for the Royal Shakespeare Company – he was born radial dysplasia affecting his right arm – and he doubtless understands Shardlake's pride in the face of what some consider his physical imperfection. "I'm known for my gait," Shardlake says. "It is I, and I embrace it."

Such self-assertion is profoundly modern, and for all its Tudor trappings, Shardlake is filled with present day resonances – not least in its portrait of Cromwell who claims to speak for the people but actually works on behalf of the elite. "The truth must be what we want it to be," Cromwell declares, and though Shardlake knows this is un -true, he also knows that saying so can get a man killed.

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By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

Contributing Film Critic

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