The Good Die Young

M. Night Shyamalan's newest thriller, "Old", is ultimately a bit too long in the tooth, offering up shocks, characters and themes that all feel past their date of freshness

The peaks and valleys of M. Night Shyamalan's career are the stuff of Hollywood legend. From his meteoric rise off the back of hits like "The Sixth Sense" and "Signs" to cratering back down with missteps like "The Last Airbender" and "After Earth", his trajectory has nearly as many twists as the movies filling his filmography. After a relative resurgence with films like "The Visit" and "Split" and after the mixed reception of "Glass", is a return to form in full effect or is another potential downswing on the horizon? Unfortunately, it could be the latter as "Old" (based on the Swiss graphic novel "Sandcastle" by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters) is an awkward, occasionally entertaining yet highly frustrating supernatural melodrama that abandons any semblance of nuanced storytelling.

The film features three different families who venture to a remote beach while on vacation; Guy (Gael García Bernal), Prisca (Vicky Crieps) and their children Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and Trent (Nolan River), Charles (Rufus Sewell) and his daughter Kara (Kyle Bailey), wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee) and mother Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant), and married couple Jarin (Ken Leung) and Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird). While their seaside getaway seems like a slice of paradise at the onset, they become quickly alarmed when all of the children suddenly appear older. Uncertain what's causing the accelerated aging, internal turmoil and fear began to take root as they fight for their lives in a literal race against the clock. The movie also stars Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie as teenage versions of Trent and Maddox, respectively, and features Aaron Pierre and Eliza Scanlon as an older Kara.

"Old" is neither particularly thrilling or frightening. The mystery propelling the plot is intriguing, but several scenes tend to languish, robbing them of their effectiveness. In addition, stilted acting throughout transforms moments that should be poignant or heartbreaking into unintentionally comedic throwaways. The dialogue is often ropey, with incredulous quotes flying out of people's mouths left and right. All of these deficiencies leave the story feeling rather stale and telegraphed before it ever fully gains traction. However, "Old" isn't totally irredeemable. The cinematography is strong, as the film is shot and lit very well. The beautiful beach landscape operates as a perfect aesthetic backdrop and the clever premise does insulate the picture with genuinely creepy undertones. The issue is its atmospherics never amount to any truly satisfying payoffs and even when a scene does manage to strike a nerve, it's almost immediately undone by insipid dialogue. As a writer and director, Shyamalan is much more talented than this film suggests. There are some ambitious sequences where his choices to move the camera through space prove he still has a good eye and knows how to perfectly block a scene. His gifts seem tailor-made to adapt a story like this and his ability to build tension remains sharp, but the overall execution leaves a lot to be desired. If you're looking for a gimmicky thriller to kill a few hours, give it a spin. Otherwise, value your youth while you still have it and skip this cheesy morality tale. C-