M. Night Shyamalan’s Old is the Worst Movie I’ve Ever Seen
It’s midnight on a Tuesday. I worked an 11 hour shift at the hospital. When I got home at 7:30 tonight I decided to just get in bed and catch up on some of the “horror” movies 2021 had to offer, that I just so happened to miss. Don’t Breath 2 was one of the dumbest sequels created, stemming from a great original, reverse home invasion of the first. But I just couldn’t sleep after and now I refuse to sleep until I let the world know that Old is not only M. Night Shyamalan’s worst film, but also the worst movie I have ever seen. Period. Hard Stop.
I get it, Shyamalan’s movies just aren’t for everyone. I personally loved Signs and thought The Village was alright. Lady in the Water is one of my more underrated movies from him and The Visit was genuinely a brilliant film. But Old. Old…. M. Night Shyamalan you should be fucking ashamed of yourself. Where the fuck do you get off? Who greenlit this heaping pile of human shit? I’m not putting a SPOILERS warning, because they spoiled the entire movie in the fucking trailers. Wanna save yourself a headache, high blood pressure, and an hour 48 minutes of your life? Watch the trailer then block M. Night Shymalan content on Youtube from your algorithm.
You wanna know what old is about? A bunch of poorly developed cliché throw away characters, most with some form of illness, get invited to some hotel where they set them up to see some awesome secluded beach that’s totally top secret and only the lucky guests get told about. Ya know what happens on that beach? Anyone on it gets fucking old and dies. That’s it. That’s the movie Old. A dozen people get escorted to a private beach where the ancient rocks magnetize the cells in their bodies to rapidly age. The old lady dies first because of course she would. A rapper known as “Midsized Sedan”…..yes you read that correct, rapper, Midsized Sedan was invited because of his rare blood disease gets stabbed to death by a CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER doctor who has schizophrenia. It has to be all caps because he screams it 45 times. His trophy wife with a calcium disorder gets kyphosis (extreme curvature of the spine) and her bones crumble into a broken heap in a cave. A psychiatrist with epilepsy doesn’t have an episode until she decided she wants to get off the beach (convenient) and all the kids visually age rapidly while the adults all look the same until they die and their body and bones turn to dust.
This is gunna be all over the place but for fucks sake I can’t stay consistent just like the aging can’t stay consistent in Old. Here is a list of everything wrong with M. Night Shyamalan’s Old.
- The characters are awfully developed and none of them matter. You have no attachment to any of them.
- The trailer spoiled the entire movie….except for that one twist at the end (I’ll get to it).
- Old has hands down, THE WORST writing I have ever witnessed in film. There is Twin Peaks levels of uncanny valley, but no human being speaks the way they speak in Old. Whoever wrote the dialogue should be fired and if its my good pal M. Night, you gotta retire. Fuck it retire anyway.
- Magnet rocks make people age fast. OLD MAGNET ROCKS MAKE PEOPLE OLD
- The children are the only ones who visually change….because they got older actors to show it.
- The adults just always look the same. Only changes are, the doctor get schizophrenia faster, his wife gets kyphosis, the dad goes blind, the mom goes deaf and also has a tumor grow rapidly, epilepsy psych conveniently doesn’t have a seizure until she tries to leave.
- The 6 year old children who age to adulthood in 3 hours have sex, then have a baby delivered off screen in 38 seconds and guess what? The baby dies. You wanna know how the baby died, medically speaking of course? Well according to Midsized Sedan, and this is a direct quote that hurts me to type, “the baby died due to lack of attention”. I’m sorry Mr. Midsized Sedan. What the fuck did you just say? The baby died due to “lack of attention”?
~Record Scratch~
What the actual fuck are we doing here M? “The baby died due to lack of attention”? On a beach, surrounded by old magnet rocks that make people grow old fast. That’s it? That’s the line? You heard that while filming and thought to yourself, yeah that’s sounds right, good job Midsized Sedan, great delivery. You either made this movie to troll us all or you are actually delusional. Maybe it was both, but come the fuck on man, “the baby died due to lack of attention”. You could have said an invisible chupacabra drained its blood while nobody was looking and THAT would have been better than “the baby died due to lack of attention”. I fucking hate you.
- Everytime they try to leave the way they came in they have a headache and just appear back on the beach. The nurse character tries to explain it as how divers have to slowly ascend to avoid decompression sickness aka the bends. Yeah whatever that character was actually fine overall.
- The only actual conflict if when the schizo doctor tries to kill people, it’s dumb. Dumb character, dumb writing for the character, bad acting, awful interactions.
- Instead of anyone actively seeking like a cave or following the beach they just run around from one person dying, to a baby dying due to lack of attention, to bodies washing ashore. Nobody (besides the decent nurse) tries to DO anything. It is just people playing out their cliché tropes I.e psychiatrist keeps telling everyone “we should all talk about it”. Shut the fuck up, we should talk about who let this movie get to theaters.
- At one point the former kids who are now middle age adults find a journal from SOMEONE, who knows who it was, but they apparently knew all about the OLD MAGNET ROCKS and decided to write it all down, and the one smart thing I heard the entire movie was, maybe we can make a metal tube and block the magnets as was we try to get out. Brilliant of course that was how they escaped right? Nope.
- Everyone dies besides the 6 and 11 year old children who hit their 50s in a day, one had sex, had a child, lost it due to lack of attention, then remembered the little boy he befriended at the resort made him a cypher to figure out. 6 year olds are super spies now, and the cypher said “my uncle doesn’t like the coral”. K thanks kid.
- They escape through the coral all the while good old M. Night is watching and recording them as Trial 73 because….wait for it……titular big M. Night Shymalan twist time…. big pharma is rapidly testing new drugs on people and it speeds up the trial process.
THAT’S RIGHT FOLKS. THE MORAL OF OLD IS DON’T TRUST BIG PHARMA
The surviving kids, now adults show back up at the resort after some innocuous head of the trials makes statements and they tell a cop they met AS KIDS THE DAY BEFORE, here’s a diary, all these HUNDREDS of people who have been missing died on that beach. Hundreds of people just missing, nobody makes the connection they all went to the exact same resort, they all had some medical maladies and just vanished? What fucking world do you think this takes place in? It’s earth, Yeah Earth with newly risen OLD MAGNET ROCKS, but when hundreds of people go missing ALL tied to the same resort SOMETHING would have happened before Trial 73. Holy fuck why am I even trying to rationalize any of this, this movie is actual hot garbage. Anyway the movie ends Resident Evil style, the former kid now adults fly off in a helicopter with random cop from resort A, cut to credits.
I don’t know what was going on in M. Night Shyamalan’s head throughout this process. I don’t know which strung out coke writer put together the dialogue for these actors. I don’t know what was worse, the actual direction of the movie or the writing, but they were both god awful. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch an M. Night Shyamalan movie again. What I do know is I will never get that hour and 48 minutes of my life back and I will never forgive you for it Mr. M. Night. I need to go wash my eyes out with bleach and eat an edible.
Old Review
0 – Babies Dying Due to Lack of Attention – out of 5
Do not watch this movie, please, I beg of you.
And don’t you dare get mad at me about the baby stuff, I didn’t write the fucking script, I didn’t make this movie and if I did, I’d find that beach and stay there for the rest of my short pathetic life. I have seen a lot of movies. I have seen a lot of horror movies. I have seen a lot of dumb horror movies. I have seen a lot of bad horror movies. This is arguably the worst.
Thank you Bob! Now I don’t have to waste my time with this. True hero
S.M. NIGHTS claim to fame was The Sixth Sense. As a horror fan and a writer of short stories in the horror genre, I absolutely LOVED The Sixth Sense. I had alot of faith in M. NIGHT as the next Stephen King. But no.
They get worse and worse.
Old is for sure thr worst film. The Happening is just as bad if not worse.
The Visit was brilliant IMO.
Oh and Split was really good too.
How does this dude keep getting the go ahead to make moviee.
I watched this movie, and immediately googled old is the worst fucking movie ever to find posts like this. fuck this movie fucking shitty actors, fucking shitty dialogue. Non fucking sense science and medicine. kids somehow learn to speak like adults just by aging rapidly like they gained english with their fucking cells growing. fuck you m night shamishit
What an absolute dog’s egg of a film. Just caught it on Netflix, and much like others before me I came upon your review after googling “Why is M. Night Shyamalan’s Old such a piece of shit?” Utter trash, and I weep for the careers of Gael Garcia Bernal and others whose careers aged 100 years and turned to dust over the course of 1 hour and 48 minutes. And for the person who “gets” the baby dying of a “lack of attention” after 30 seconds a.k.a 6 days, how come the only aging that Calcium Deficient Bikini Wench(tm) underwent in 12 hours was having her mascara run? Prior to her becoming a human knot because she tried to move forwards in a cave because there was a light source, natch. Anyway, fuck this film. It has not one redeeming quality, and shame on Netflix for buying it. My enthusiasm hit the morgue quicker than that fucking attention-starved baby. FML.
Wish I had read this instead of watching the movie, but it’s the flick my family picked for thanksgiving. We all agree it’s the worst movie we’ve ever seen. Your review, however, is the best review of a worst movie, ever.
I wish M Night’s film career would die from a lack of attention, but sadly, we all keep watching his stuff.
Also, the baby should have lived and been the last one standing. That alone would have saved this movie lol.
I just finished the movie and googled “why is OLD such a horrible movie?”. This is where google brought me. I am so happy to see a review like this
FUCK M.Night motherfucker. He should die due to lack of attention. piece of shit movie
I watched this Movie on Saturday night. And you are correct all around. It was a hot mess that reminded me of a bad B-Movie.
I don’t know why I give M. Night the benefit of the doubt. I can’t say he has ever made a good movie (and I wholeheartedly disagree with you…The Visit was not a masterpiece…but it was a piece of something).
The rating system for his movies should be “Baby Dying of Lack of Attention” (Worst) to “The Plants Are Killing Everyone and The Water repels the ‘aliens'” to “I See Dead People.” Even then, compared to a normal 1-10 scale, the best his movies get is a 5. I do not know how they keep allowing him to make movies. He is the Uwe Boll of “Twist” movies…
Soooo entertaining to read people trashing this movie the way it deserves to be. If anything This Part makes the movie actually fun! I just want to jump on the Dialog. What was clearly written by a 12th grader. Who wrote for “Midsized Sudan?” Sir…have you ever actually Met a Black Person?? And why does this handsome, young, physically fit, successful buck of a male specimen get so easy get snuffed out mercilessly by and older white male who’s only repercussion is a time out?? Also, when a movie needs to rely on the weak under developed characters to constantly explain what the heck is going on, line by line in the movie, it means the plot is unclear and nonsensical. I couldn’t tell if this was the actual movie, or just a table read! *How would they know the Baby momma girl fell asleep- while climbing a freaking mountain? Why could we not see her body after they slowly drug us around the rock to do so? *What was that idiotic speech the psychologist gave about her sister before she spazzed out and died, without any mention of her dead husband? * The Baby died of loneliness??? There’s just too many more ridiculous errors in this movie to keep going. I feel like this movie was pieced together from scraps of an idea M Night Shyamalan had very very early in his career, and the studio needed to crap out one more movie from him. It was a cash grab based on his name alone. And while I can see this as a safe business move on their parts, I lament for all the smart, original well written independent films that are sitting in someone’s box or on a shelf in a vast warehouse somewhere that will never see the light of day.
The most shockingly accurate description. I watched the movie tonight and couldn’t understand how it made it past the script stage. Horrific acting, story, filming. Just awful. You hit the nail on the head with your review. I laughed out loud when they said “died of lack of attention” How was this movie made? Mind is blown
I laughed so hard at this review. Found it by googling, “Old is worst movie ever,” while watching said movie with my husband, who has a perpetual confused look while watching it.
I agree this movie was a piece of junk namely for the ridiculous dialogue. I honestly wondered if he was trying to use dialogue from Leave It To Beaver or Father Knows Best or something. I was literally waiting for this movie to be an endearing homage to ’50s style film. Nope. The dialogue literally sounds like something you’d witness in Wiseau’s The Room, especially early on. It’s… horrible.
HOWEVER… about “the baby died due to lack of attention”… I immediately “got it”. That statement made sense to me and here’s why: time is going faster on that beach right? 30 minutes is 1 year. One minute would be almost 12 days. So half a minute would be 6 days.
So think about it. If you put a baby down and isolate it after it’s born, it’s a goner. 30 seconds = 6 days. The baby was born and then basically left alone for 6 days. Yeah, it’s dead. And babies do need constant attention. They’ll suffer even if they get fed but don’t get any touch or interaction. They will literally get sick and die.
So that’s what happened. I think that’s what they were saying. It all happens fast on that beach. No baby could survive really.
Anyway, I immediately assumed that that’s what they were referring to.
That review was infinitely more entertaining than this movie. I feel like I aged 5 years while watching this.
I think you’ve been quite complimentary here. Honestly I envied the people dying while I endured this embarrassment.
Rifftrax is one of my favorite bits of pop culture, so i saw their commentary while watching this for the first time. I’ve long thought Shyamalan is mostly a pompous hack, like Ed Wood with the pretension amped to 1000. I also walked away from this thinking “this movie is easy within the 20 worst I’ve ever seen,” so bad that it even seemed to defeat the Rifftrax guys. This movie manages the amazing feat of being both completely insane and incredibly boring. It’s basically “Waiting for Godot” pumped full of the most ridiculous acting class monologues ever committed to paper. MNS writes dialogue like a beta-testing, bugged-out Chat AI. I will never forget one character responding to people aging decades in front of her eyes with “Yes, but who are you and what do you do for a living!” I’m guessing this new movie is also terrible, since they’ve withheld reviews until 2 days before the opening.
I watched Ryan George’s pitch meeting about this movie. It did not do it justice to just how bad this movie is and Ryan is really good at his job. So I tracked down this movie immediately after watching the pitch meeting and I knew in the first five minutes that I did not want to watch this piece of shit. But I persevered just to see all the idiotic things he pointed out, not the LEAST of which was a baby dying from lack of attention in the span of 30 seconds or whatever it was. M. Night needs to call it a fucking day. THAT WAS HORRIBLE.
Also, when do they sleep? it should have happened every hour no? not going to do the math, can’t be bothered…
Ya poor script bad movie
What an absolute dog’s egg of a film. Just caught it on Netflix, and much like others before me I came upon your review after googling “Why is M. Night Shyamalan’s Old such a piece of shit?” Utter trash, and I weep for the careers of Gael Garcia Bernal and others whose careers aged 100 years and turned to dust over the course of 1 hour and 48 minutes. And for the person who “gets” the baby dying of a “lack of attention” after 30 seconds a.k.a 6 days, how come the only aging that Calcium Deficient Bikini Wench(tm) underwent in 12 hours was having her mascara run? Prior to her becoming a human knot because she tried to move forwards in a cave because there was a light source, natch. Anyway, fuck this film. It has not one redeeming quality, and shame on Netflix for buying it. My enthusiasm hit the morgue quicker than that fucking attention-starved baby. FML.
200% with you. So glad I found your review. Thought I was the only one to be bored and unamused by this rubbish.
Thank you Bob.