M. Night Shyamalan is back, and he’s inviting you on a beach getaway! Surely nothing will go wrong, and there will absolutely be no twists to worry about. Maybe. Shyamalan’s latest is Old, a film inspired by the graphic novel Sandcastle, where things go very wrong and get very weird for a group of people on a secluded, idyllic beach. Watch the Old trailer below.

Old Trailer

The latest film from M. Night Shyamalan is a departure of sorts, at least in terms of setting. Shyamalan usually makes material that sticks close to his hometown of Philadelphia. He’s left the Philly region before, of course, with films like The Last Airbender and After Earth, and now he’s doing it again with Old, a movie that he shot in the Dominican Republic. In fact, Old is Shyamalan’s first film shot entirely outside of Greater Philadelphia.

Old is inspired by the graphic novel Sandcastle, written by Pierre Oscar Levy and illustrated by Frederik Peeters. The film isn’t a straightforward adaptation of the comic, but here’s the book’s synopsis regardless:

It’s a perfect beach day, or so thought the family, young couple, a few tourists, and a refugee who all end up in the same secluded, idyllic cove filled with rock pools and sandy shore, encircled by green, densely vegetated cliffs.

But this utopia hides a dark secret.

First there is the dead body of a woman found floating in the crystal-clear water.

Then there is the odd fact that all the children are aging rapidly. Soon everybody is growing older?every half hour?and there doesn’t seem to be any way out of the cove. Levy’s dramatic storytelling works seamlessly with Peeters’s sinister art to create a profoundly disturbing and fantastical mystery.

And here’s the movie’s synopsis:

This summer, visionary filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan unveils a chilling, mysterious new 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.

The filmmaker has assembled a very impressive cast here, including Gael García Bernal, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, Vicky Krieps, Abbey Lee, Embeth Davidtz, and Rufus Sewell. I’m particularly excited to see Vicky Krieps again – after her great work in Phantom Thread, I expected her career to blow up, but she’s been oddly low-key since then.

I remain a Shyamalan fan. I pride myself on the fact that I stuck with the filmmaker even when many gave up on him – I think The Village, a film that seemed to signal the beginning of his downfall, is actually one of his best films. So I was thrilled when the director had something of a comeback, starting with the fun found-footage horror flick The Visit and continuing with Split. Split, of course, set up a long-awaited sequel to Unbreakable – and that sequel was Glass. And while I’m still a Shyamalan fan, and am excited to see Old, I thought Glass was a major disappointment. Fingers crossed that it was just a weird misfire and that he’ll bounce back nicely with this movie.

Old opens on July 23, 2021.

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