Old (2021)

Written by Peter McGinn on May 7, 2022

There is a low-rent movie review site we all know that I go to when I am deciding whether to watch a movie or program. I don’t go there because it is full of great reviews and accurate ratings, but rather because sometimes I find it is more revealing why a production gets poor reviews that what the actual ratings are.

There were a lot of negative reviews of Old, but not for the most common reasons, such as racism, or political hatred of multi-culturalism. No it appears a lot of the negativity is aimed the director Shyamalen because this is not The Sixth Sense.

I thought the movie was okay, especially since I am not a horror fan at all. It isn’t great, but interesting enough to make it worth my time. I didn’t see the gaping plot holes or inconsistencies that reviewers mentioned but never got specific about. I didn’t feel the acting was bad. I mean, who knows how we would look and sound if life itself stopped making sense to us? If what happens to these people happened to me, I hope I could be forgiven for looking shell-shocked, acting lost, or staring uncomprehendingly at people around me. Seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction to me. We are jaded by the horror and suspense movies we watch, but would we make sense as people if we were living in one?

Anyway, not a great film, but worth a peek if you take it at face value.