by Gill Pringle
It’s no secret that director M Night Shyamalan is a big fan of Australian actors. Ever since he cast Toni Collette in his hit spooky thriller, The Sixth Sense 22 years ago, he has repeatedly populated his films with Aussie talent, and his latest psychological thriller, Old, is no different, starring Australia’s Eliza Scanlen (Babyteeth, Little Women) and Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road, Lovecraft Country) plus New Zealand’s Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit, Leave No Trace).
Despite the title of his new film, Shyamalan argues that Old is less about aging and more about choosing to live life in the present.
Something is definitely wrong in paradise when a family discover that the secluded tropical beach they are holidaying on, is somehow causing them to age rapidly … reducing their entire lives into a single day.
Filmed on location in the Dominican Republic, casting was crucial, using three different actors to portray key characters over a 50-year age span, with the result that Scanlen, McKenzie and Alex Wolff each had other actors portray their younger and older versions.
If that sounds tricky, Shyamalan says he took his time getting it just right: “I had the time because of the pandemic, so we could do this properly and really take a look everywhere around the world. It wasn’t too difficult once we decided which order to cast, focusing on the middle group, the 15-30 age group, so we found Thomasin, Alex and Eliza first and then we searched for people who looked like them.
“Once I found Eliza, I was, ‘OK, find me a little girl that’s 5-6 years old, that looks like this’. And then I would only audition girls that looked like Eliza. Or, ‘find me someone older than Thomasin that looks like her, that has the same elegance’,” he says.
“I’ve had a lot of Australians in my movies; I would say a strangely weird amount of Australians, so I wonder if there’s something in the culture that makes acting a little bit more of a craft than it is maybe in the US, I’m not sure,” muses the director who worked with Mel Gibson on Signs and Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould in The Visit.
“Maybe it’s something in the training or how they approach the craft. Oftentimes, they have an easier time doing the American accent. It’s closest and I don’t feel the limitations that I normally feel when I get someone from another country to do an American accent. They’re fluid and loose but it feels slightly different and unique to me.”
Based one Pierre-Oscar Levy’s graphic novel, Sandcastle, Shyamalan hopes Old will promote a discussion about living life in the present. “I want it to feel like you’re watching a two-hour Twilight Zone episode – which I love, the weirdness, trying to understand what’s happening. I never want the audience to feel safe. I want them to be figuring out one thing, now another and another and another, like the characters in the movie.”
Old propels the proverbial “ticking clock” storytelling device to new heights. The characters calculate that they are aging two years every hour, reducing about 50 years of life into one single day. As every attempt they make to escape the beach fails, they ultimately must decide whether they’re going to spend the rest of their lives fighting, perhaps futilely, to free themselves or to accept the seemingly inevitable and make the most of the time they have left.
McKenzie’s role as Maddox created much reflection for the young actress, “There’s a moment near the beginning of the film where Maddox realises that she’s aging, and her relationship with her mum is changing,” she says. “As you get older, things become deeper, feelings and relationships become more complicated.”
In looking at her own life to find a way into her Old character, she says, “I thought a lot about my family, my relationship with my parents and how that has changed as I’ve gotten older, how protective I am over my little sister and how protective and caring my older siblings are to me.”
Shyamalan was very specific in his direction. “Night made it very clear that he didn’t want Thomasin, Alex or I to be imitating the children,” Scanlen adds. “He wanted us to take on the physicality of an adult and have the mental capacity of an adult. So, our neurology has changed, but the distinction is that we don’t have the life experience to accompany the development in thought and the ability to have an opinion and have a greater perception on life.”
It posed an unusual challenge. “That’s what was so cool about this. While it’s a thriller, and it’s shocking and disturbing, at the heart of it is something quite fundamental and human and touching. I feel like this film is reminding us that the most important thing is connecting with people… I found this quote when I was doing this film: ‘We invented time, so things don’t happen all at once.’ I think that’s so great,” Scanlen says.
Shyamalan is excited to show Old to his own parents. “I can’t wait to show my mom and see what she thinks. She was laughing when I told her what the title was. I said, ‘Oh mom, we’re making this movie, Old. . .’ and she said, ‘Oh are you making a movie about me and your dad?!’ And I was ‘Whoa. Kind of, I’m thinking about life and aging and all that stuff’. And she would laugh and hit me,” teases the 50-year-old director who was born in India and raised in the wealthy Penn Valley area outside Philadelphia.
“But I think she’s gonna like it; the idea of where she’s come from and thinking about life and bigger movements, it’s kinda where the characters get to, so I think they will relate to the destination and feel at peace about it all,” he says.
If Shyamalan typically films close to his home, then he got his feet wet in the Dominican Republic, his first time filming overseas, and is excited when we suggest Australia as his next location: “I would love to go there. I was just thinking about my last trip to Australia when I came for The Visit and the food and the culture. You also have the best accents!”
Old is in cinemas July 22, 2021
