Film

Everyone Is Obsessed With The Beach That Makes You Old From The Movie ‘Old’

Get in girls, we're going to the beach that makes you old.

by Joseph Earp  26 July 2021
old film memes photo

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

The premise of the new M. Night Shyamalan movie Old is so simple that it can be summed up in eight words: there is a beach that makes you old. Done. Dusted. What more could you possibly need to know?

In that way, Old represents part of Shyamalan’s thrilling return to basics. Emerging on the scene with the hugely popular and impressively lean The Sixth Sense, the filmmaker grew somewhat bloated as the years went on — The Lady In The Water, his critical and commercial flop, seemed like the work of someone who had gotten too high on their own supply, complete with an author insert character who saves the day and played by Shyamalan himself.

But from Split onwards, brevity became the name of Shyamalan’s game, with the filmmaker focusing on simple premises and outrageous shocks. Glass, his long-gestating sequel to Unbreakable, concludes with one of the most understated climaxes of the man’s entire career, a grimly simple fight in a parking lot.

And now there’s Old, which, let me repeat again, is all about a beach that makes you old. More specifically, the beach ages you one year for every single half hour, resulting in a terrifyingly mortal set of encounters for the film’s main characters, a family trapped on — say it with me — the beach that makes you old.

The simplicity appears to be paying off for Shyamalan too: though the film has gotten decidedly mixed reviews, it has opened at number one at the American box office.

It’s also been a smash hit on Twitter, quickly becoming a sensational meme — for the last three days, timelines around the world have become crowded with tweets about the beach that makes you old. Here are just some of the highlights:

Australians will have to wait a little longer to see Old, given that whole lockdown thing — the film was due to be released here on July 22, but cinemas around the country have been forced to close. It’s a shame. But hey, at least we have the memes to (pun intended) tide us over.