Old (2021) How tempting it is to mock our reigning maestro of far-fetched twisty thrillers, M. Night Shyamalan......but we'll try our best to resist.
We didn't join the rejoicing chorus when his formidable ego got the best of him and sent his promising directing career into a nosedive.....(aided by the triple whammy of the overhyped "The Village", the pretentious "Lady In The Water" and the silly, unintentionally funny "The Happening")
Because even in his mis-fires, we could see his love of what Hitchcock referred to as 'pure cinema', using the all the tools of filmmaking, to tell a story visually......and elicit a powerful audience response.
Which is why his movies don't look like anybody else's but his own. And why we remain a fan.
His new one offers a rich sampling of the best and worst of Shyamalan - those elegant panning shots that tell you he's up to something ominous.......those tantalizing clues strewn through the movie like a trail of bread crumbs leading to....yes, THE BIG TWIST WE DARE NOT REVEAL.
Beyond silly? You bet.. Requiring a suspension of disbelief? Big time. Filled with holes in the mythology it's asking you to swallow? Oh yeah, we lost count.
But once you start watching this movie, you don't take your eyes off it for a second. You wouldn't dare for fear of missing something.
By now, everyone knows the 'Twilight Zone' set up here......a collection of unlucky disparate vacationers at a plush tropical resort stuck on a private beach with a unique power.......to age them all rapidly in 24 hours. Losing years of their lives with every passing hour, the adults sprout wrinkles and head into middle age while their kids go from toddlers to teens in record time.
And escape attempts always end with them blacking out and finding themselves deposited right back on the beach.
A host of issues get thrown into the mix here......racism, physical illness, the parent-child divisions, the obsession with staying young.....and pure simple craziness. And all of it comes together at the end, when Shyamalan finally lays all his cards on the table.
As for THE BIG TWIST WE DARE NOT REVEAL, you're either going to find it clever in its irony (and its relation to current events) or you'll simply roll your eyes and find it massively ridiculous.
Like the rest of the film, the twist doesn't bear close scrutiny and you could easily poke a hundred holes in it.
It didn't bother us all that much........after all, we don't ever remember people spending a lot of time poking holes in Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" episodes.
Whatever you might think of the twist, for BQ, getting there was most of the fun. And we always can't wait to see what Shyamalan's up to next.
And there's not many filmmakers we can say that about. 3 stars (***).
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