An M. Night Shyamalan horror movie is always going to deliver a twist, and the ending ofOldis no different. The 2021 horror movie begins with a premise that some might not think makes any sense: a group of characters travel to a beach resort and learn that they are getting older super quickly. They have no idea what’s happening or if they can make it stop and go back home.
While M. Night Shyamalan has made some of the most compelling and entertaining horror and thriller movies, includingThe Sixth Sensewhich has an amazing twist, not everyone lovedOld. Still, the movie has an interesting ending, and it’s cool to see how it compares to the graphic novel that it is based on.
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How Does Old End?
After the premise ofOldis revealed that the characters vacationing on a beach are aging quickly (one year every half an hour), a character says that “trial 73” is over. This is the big twist that is always part of anM. Night Shyamalan movie, includingThe Visit. For some, they might have guessed what was going on from the start. For others, this might have come out of nowhere.
Audiences find out that Warren & Warren, a pharmaceutical company, created the beach resort. They want to experiment on people and give them drugs. The timeline of the beach allows them to do these drug trials really quickly.
Maddox and Trent save the day when they tell Greg Mitchel (Daniel Ison) a police officer, what has been going on. TheOldending explains that Greg will help Maddox (Thomasin McKenzie) and Trent Cappa (Alex Wolff) see their aunt again and the Warren & Warren employees are going to be investigated.
Olddidn’t do well with audiences, as the premise can be hard to get on board with, and the twist is even more confusing. The movie has a 50% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and a 53% Audience Score. When compared to thebest plot twists in movies, theOldending is strange. Why is this beach full of magical powers? What caused that in the first place? The movie suggests that audiences should suspend their disbelief and simply agree that this is true. But it still feels too far-fetched to be possible.
The explanation of a company experimenting on people on this beach is also pretty heavy-handed. There have been countless movies, TV shows, and books that talk about the evils of corporate greed, and this feels like piling on instead of telling and fresh and original story. While there are somegood but illogical plot twists,Oldjust doesn’t work well.
What is Old Based On?
Oldis based on the graphic novelSandcastlebyPierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters. The general story is the same, as characters travel to a beach for a vacation and realize that they are going to age very quickly.
There are manygreat horror movies based on graphic novelsas these are often rich and creative source material. While not everyone lovedOld, part of the criticism was that it didn’t live up to the promise of the source material.Sandcastleis fascinating and mysterious, and it makes sense that Shyamalan wanted to adapt it. However, it’s possible to argue that the twist ending ofOldmakes the mistake of offering up an explanation that audiences aren’t going to buy.
What Happens In The Original Source Material?
There is one big difference between the graphic novel and the movie. InOld, the characters are murdered, which contributes to the creepy atmosphere. InSandcastle, the characters choose to die because they have learned the truth about what’s going to happen to them, or they simply become older and pass away.
It’s interesting that whileOldgives a reason for why people are aging on this beach,Sandcastleleaves that as a mystery. Readers find out that people age every 30 minutes and that they are going to die. But that’s about it.
TheOldending does offer up an explanation for why people are aging so fast on this beach. But even though it makes sense to fully explain this, some feel thatOldis a poor adaptation. Some people didn’t like theOldtwist ending and felt that it was corny rather than scary or interesting.
In an interview withCinemablend.com, M. Night Shyamalan shared why he chose to create the ending that he did. He said, “The ending for the movie came from [Sandcastle], at least my interpretation of a couple of the moments in the middle of the graphic novel where they insinuate something mysterious … there’s something mysterious there, and this was my explanation of those frames [and] what was going on there.”
