SPOILERS are ahead for M. Night Shyamalan’s Old.
So you’ve experienced Old. Besides booking your yearly physical a bit early or double-checking the fine print on your upcoming vacation getaway, how are we holding up? M. Night Shyamalan’s latest original concept tackles aging in a horrifying sunny setting as a family and other vacationers find themselves stuck on an island and rapidly aging. From the Old ending, left the movie with a fresh twist from The Sixth Sense filmmaker to ponder and an onslaught of unanswered questions to discuss.
There’s a fantasy element of Old that we don’t exactly expect the movie to explain. Plus, the movie was a really unique and entertaining exploration of the horrors each of us likely feel about getting older. Nonetheless, here are the most lingering questions we have about the summer movie after the credits rolled:
How Was The Island Discovered?
At the end of Old, we find out that the terrible vacation we experience with those on the island is in fact a planned study that scientists have crafted in order to speed up drug testing. There is a brief mention that the island is a mystic place that was once discovered and later decided upon to use in this manner. But how did it first go down? It would have been interesting to see a flashback of some sort about the origins of the island because it doesn’t exactly make sense how it was discovered in a way that its founders could have survived long enough to tell the tale and return?
How Are This Many Scientists On Board To Let People Unwillingly Die?
The big twist of Old is how the people on the island are going through the misery in order to actually help society as a whole make medical advancements so more people do not have to suffer from conditions like epilepsy. We see a massive lab full of scientists that are aware of the experiments being done on these people without their knowledge, likely with many of them becoming aware of the circumstances of how life on the island pans out. Are we to believe that many scientists care more about testing medicine for the masses than the livelihood of the people being bamboozled to give up their lives?
Why Did They Allow Children To Be Part Of The Study?
The only reason the resort is found out by the end of it is thanks to the young children who go on the island and survive throughout the day into the next. The next morning after every other vacationer in their group has died, they find how to leave that horrid place, get out of their rapid aging cycle, alert the police and go back home. Now that we think about it, the resort could have dodged the bullet of being found out if they didn’t invite children in the first place. Plus, how terrible is it to kill a six-year-old for a science experiment they are not even really part of?
How Did Mid-Sized Sedan Die From The Stabbing?
Another question left on our minds after Old is how the character of Mid-Sized Sedan had to die when other characters who are stabbed were quickly healed. Rufus Sewell’s character of Charles kills him in the middle of the movie, but then later on and in other situations when the knife is used on other people they don’t straight up die from it. Now, what it could be is Charles was able to get right to the exact right blood vessel or organ to kill Sedan immediately where the others were not stabbed with enough effort, but it’s still an odd loose end.
How Did Prisca Survive Her Tumor Surgery?
One of the most gut-wrenching scenes in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest was when some of the vacationers decide to pull out a massive tumor out of Prisca’s body before it kills her. Now I’ve never seen a tumor procedure actually go down, but the way that the scene plays out just doesn’t seem medically sound. Plus, can a tumor that large in the body even allow Prisca to survive even if they did get it out as quickly as they did? I do not have the stomach to look up a real procedure remotely like this to get an answer so this is staying in the question column.
Do They Purposefully Recruit Certain Professions To Be On The Island?
One thing about Old, you may have noticed too, is how there was a balanced mix of folks on the island all at once. Seriously, what are the chances that a psychologist, surgeon and nurse would all be at the same place and same time for this dire event? We know they were recruited there due to their medical history and conditions, but were they also filtered in by profession to ensure they could stay on the island longer? It would make sense to allow for a longer experiment for the study’s drugs but it was never addressed.
Was There A Treatment In Place For The Patients With Mental Illnesses?
At the end of the movie, there was also revealed to be some contention from one scientist to the leader of the operation concerning Charles presence on the island, who was dealing with some mental condition as opposed to a physical one. He talked about how he felt the people with mental illnesses should be separated from the other patients. Which allows us to wonder if they were also experimenting with medicine for mental illness as well? And what other incidents happened as a result of them being accelerated by the island?
How Long Has The Island Been Used As A ‘Resort’?
And we’re curious about the length of time this island experiment has been in business! As the end of Old suggests, it has been found out and will likely be a national news story, true crime documentary and massive scandal. But how many people actually went through this disastrous vacation and how many true medical breakthroughs were discovered before they were shut down? If it’s gone on for a while, we’d also wonder how more missing persons might be identified and investigated prior to Trent and Maddox breaking out.
Okay, now what do you think? Did you leave Old with more questions than answers? Vote in our poll below and watch out for more upcoming horror films for your next trip to the movies.
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