Time (Old) — The Twist That Doesn't Twist, Or How M. Night Shyamalan Aged Worse Than His Characters

"The scorching sun of M. Night Shyamalan has been burning the same celluloid grid for decades: a group of archetypal characters, a claustrophobic setting, and a final twist that, at best, makes you raise an eyebrow as if you'd seen a ghost... or a spoiler on Twitter. Time (Old) is not the exception, but the rule written in indelible ink in the Indian-American director's manual of instructions. Released in 2021, this production of Universal Pictures and Perfect World Pictures arrives as a reminder that, even in the era of streaming and algorithms, there are things that never change: Shyamalan's taste for forced twists, his obsession with the supernatural disguised as a psychological thriller, and, above all, his inability to surprise without resorting to that deus ex machina that smells more like mothballs than originality. The question is not if Time will age well —spoiler: it won't—, but if Shyamalan was born with one foot in the creative geriatric ward or if he simply likes to play at being the Alfred Hitchcock of predictable plot twists, those that no longer scare even the guests of the idyllic Anamika resort, where, coincidentally, half of the movie takes place.