Old: Just How Bad  Is Manoj Shyamalan’s Latest?

Movie: Old

Rating: * ½

Old Movie Review: Our own Manoj Night  Shyamalan’s films have  been going from worse to worst, with a   few exceptions, like the 2016  thriller Split which was redeemed  by James McAvoy’s macabre performance.

Old is  tediously  non-involving.  I am trying to be as polite as  possible  about how gawd-awfully dull  and  incoherent this film really is. It is  a shame that  we have to  watch it with gritted teeth  because…well… apna Shyamalan ki picture hai, mere dost.Be warned. The  premise for his suspenseful  pilgrimages are  becoming harder to  swallow with each passing film.

In  this one, a  bunch  of vacationers are  trapped on a scenic island where the inhabitants  age  a lifetime  during 24 hours.I  don’t know how  much I aged in the two  hours of  watching this  excruciating  brain-bender,. But it definitely  left  me  a lot more worldweary and haggard at the end  of the movie when one of  the  characters sagely  informs us, “I came to the island at  9 and I am leaving at  50.” The luckier ones were  killed  earlier,  out of sheer boredom I’d think.

Island vacations popping off one after the other reminded me  of  Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. The  actors playing victims of some brain-skewed  experiment  involving an  anti-aging  drug looked lost  most of the way. Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, interesting in  other films, play a  couple   facing marital problems.The wife  had  tumour which acquires  a life of its own as  the  plot hops  from one  absurdity to another.

When their kids start  growing up  a little too fast(we are talking 10-15 years in a few hours) they  forget their own problems  and  begin to focus on how  to get off the island before the wrinkles take  over their  lives completely. was doing much the same. Trying to  figure out how to make my escape . But then the  300  rupees ticket for each individual(there were 4 of us) and  a commitment to  submit a review kept me  going.

But seriously,Shyamalan should give me  back at least my money,  if not my wasted hours.This is a dumb, pigheaded sci-fi horror film with not a single genuine scary moment. Unless  you  find a girl who was just a child a while back growing up in minutes, having sex and giving birth all  within 15 minutes. By then I was laughing too hard to  feel scared.

Really, Mr Shyamalan,  you need  a break. Forget Sixth Sense. There is  no sense left in your  vain attempts to spook us.