A movie about a tropical vacation that proves to be anything but rejuvenating tops the DVD releases for the week of Oct. 19.
“Old”: A family staying at a seaside resort starts aging rapidly after some leisure time at a secluded beach, reducing their life expectancy to one day, in director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps and Rufus Sewell.
“The children among the vacationers are in the grip of a frighteningly accelerated lifespan that seems destined to end by sundown,” writes Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips. “For the adults, the malevolent beach, approached through a slot canyon that acts as a kind of force field, the aging process is subtler, until Shyamalan turns to a more explicit realm of body horror, PG-13 division.”
For Phillips, the main conceit of the movie, based on a 2010 French graphic novel, came up a bit short ultimately. “Is the central hook in ‘Old’ enough? For many, I suspect, the answer will be not quite,” he writes.
