- By Quendrith Johnson
What JAWS did for ocean swimming, M. Night Shyamalan’s OLD threatens to do for beachgoers this Summer. You may want to skip sunbathing after you see this new movie from Universal. But that’s exactly why people flock to horror flicks, because things could always be worse. Mozart in the Jungle’s Gael García Bernal is the Dad who takes wife and mother (Vicky Krieps), plus two children, on an exotic getaway to a secluded sandy cove. The brochure explicitly warns: “no children are allowed on the beach.”
Cut to M. Night’s mercurial gift for story craft. His adapataion of graphic novel “Sandcastle,” by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, comes to jaw-dropping conclusions. Not just about leisure activities, but about Life itself… with cryptic symbols, high adrenaline thrown into hidden fears about Time. After all, even without spoilers, if every minute alive equals half-an-hour? Then what could a whole day at the beach look like; which is the axis their vacation spins around. Chatroom furor on causes for sudden-creepy aging to decomposing puts the movie on deck as an unusual potential blockbuster.
Rufus Sewell makes a line in the sand, as does a very well-chosen cast, including Embeth Davitz, troubled tourist Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird (Jupiter Ascending), Abbey Lee from HBO’s Lovecraft Country, and Aaron Pierre (Syfy’s Krypton). Alongside them are Alex Wolff, Eliza Scanlen, a wound-up Emun Elliott, Kathleen Chalfant, and Thomasin McKenzie from shock hit, Jojo Rabbit. How many have populated this strange beach-scape with no visible escape?
“OLD” from Universal Pictures, see it July 23, click here.
