10 Horror Movies That Squandered HUGE Potential
6. Old
For all of his successes as a filmmaker, M. Night Shyamalan is well noted for being more adept at coming up with intriguing concepts than seeing through their execution, and his 2021 film Old is no exception.
The body horror film rocks one hell of a premise, taking place on a secluded beach whose visitors suddenly find themselves rapidly ageing.
Like many of Shyamalan's films, it sounds like the perfect setup for a Twilight Zone-esque horror romp, but as ever, it's the follow-through that really matters.
And that's where Old quickly comes unstuck. After a compelling setup, Old gets bogged down in a quagmire of stiff, distractingly unnatural dialogue which the talented ensemble cast struggles to chew through.
Most of the characters are thin sketches and there's little in the way of consistent logic or rules to the central scenario, ahead of an underwhelming plot twist and drawn-out finale.
You can basically flip a coin on whether Shyamalan will deliver the goods or not, and sadly in the case of Old he came up desperately short.