Review: 'Old' shows M. Night Shyamalan's skills at building suspense remain strong, but his ending doesn't deliver the goods

In his latest puzzle-box thriller “Old,” writer-director M. Night Shyamalan does some of his best work in years setting up the premise — and then undercuts his efforts by failing to stick the landing.

The story starts with a Philadelphia family arriving at a tropical resort for a much-needed vacation. Guy (Gael García Bernal) works as an insurance actuary, calculating risks; his wife, Prisca (Vicky Krieps) is a museum curator and expert on anthropology; daughter Maddox (Alexa Swinton) is a painfully shy 11-year-old; and son Trent (Nolan River), 6, is an inquisitive kid who asks strangers what they do for a living. Tensions between Guy and Prisca are hinted at early, and it seems unlikely the marriage will survive past this vacation.

The family is greeted by the manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) and his assistant, Madrid (Francesca Eastwood), with custom-made cocktails. Later on, the manager clues the family in on a secret beach, in a cove away from the rest of the resort, that would be a perfect spot for a picnic.

When the family gets in the resort’s van (driven by Shyamalan, of course), they discover they’re not the only ones who received the manager’s special tip. Along for the ride are: Jarin (Ken Leung), a nurse, and his wife, Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird), a psychologist who suffers from seizures; and Charles (Rufus Sewell), a surgeon, who has brought along his leggy trophy wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee, from “Lovecraft Country”), their 6-year-old daughter Kara (Mikaya Fisher), and Charles’ mother, Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant). Once they arrive, they find someone else on the beach: A rap star (Aaron Pierre) suffering a nosebleed.

The day trip starts perfectly, with the famiiles soaking up the sun and surf. The spell is broken when young Trent is swimming in a grotto, and a woman’s body floats up behind him. The woman is someone the rapper met the night before, and brought to this beach. The rapper proclaims his innocence, but Charles has his suspicions.

Soon something else strange happens: Trent tells his mom that his swim trunks feel too tight. The next thing you know, Maddox appears to be about 16 (and played by “Jojo Rabbit’s” Thomasin McKenzie) and Trent has similarly grown into puberty (played as a teen by Alex Wolff from “Jumanji”). And, for some reason, no one can get off the beach the way they came.

Shyamalan, adapting a French comic book called “Sandcastle,” expertly doses out dollops of plot exposition at appropriate intervals, while dropping one bombshell after another to increase the suspense and decrease the number of actors left in the movie. It’s a solid ensemble, topped by Krieps (“Phantom Thread”) and García Bernal as a couple putting aside their past disputes when their family’s survival is at stake.

The problem with “Old” comes with the part where Shyamalan usually excels: The ending. The resolution here is needlessly drawn out, and calls on the audience to accept a lot on faith that Shyamalan’s talent for deception hasn’t really earned. 

I spotted two points in the final half hour where the movie could have ended sooner, and more satisfactorily — one a moment of melancholy, the other a darkly cynical scene that would have provided the same sense of dread as the paranoid thrillers of the ‘70s (examples: “Three Days of the Condor,” “The Parallax View” and “The Stepford Wives”). With either of those endings, instead of an unearned Shyamalan “twist,” “Old” could have been something timeless.

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‘Old’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong violence, disturbing images, suggestive content, partial nudity and brief strong language. Running time: 107 minutes.