Beach horror tends to mean creature features – from shark movies like Jaws and The Shallows, to the underseen Blumhouse monster movie Sweetheart. But in M. Night Shyamalan’s next film, Old, the monster appears to be the ravages of time itself. Based on the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederick Peeters, the director’s latest work revolves around a simple high concept: a family spends a day at a tropical beach that causes them to age rapidly, growing old and facing the spectre of death right in front of each others’ eyes. It’s a premise that promises a properly chilling summer movie, and the first full trailer has arrived. Check it out here.
There’s something genuinely quite haunting about Old’s central conceit – with parents played by Gael García Bernal and Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps witnessing their young children growing into young adults in a matter of hours, and themselves getting older and wrinklier by the minute. Among the impressive cast for this one are the likes of Little Women’s Eliza Scanlen, Hereditary’s Alex Wolff, Jojo Rabbit’s Thomasin McKenzie, and Lost’s Ken Leung. Shyamalan has scripted the adaptation and also directs and produces.
Here’s hoping this one continues Shyamalan’s recent return to form – after a few disappointing features, he’s made some interesting and entertaining films in recent years, from the schlocky hijinks of The Visit, to his return to the world of Unbreakable with Split and Glass. We’ll find out if Old is another Shyamalan success when it hits UK cinemas on 23 July – here’s hoping we don’t all age too much in the meantime.