Old Following Sandcastle’s Ending Could Have Improved Shyamalan’s Adaptation

M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, Old, might have been more satisfying if it had stuck closer to the original story it was based on. Shyamalan is famous for making suspenseful thrillers with unique ideas and surprising twists. Because of his previous films, audiences always expect his new movies to be even more shocking and clever than the last.

The movie Old centers around a group of tourists who visit a remote tropical resort and find themselves rapidly aging while on the beach. It’s been described as “a beach that makes you old.” Interestingly, Old is different from many of M. Night Shyamalan’s other films because it’s based on a 2011 graphic novel, but with a changed conclusion.

Sandcastle’s Ending Hits Harder Than Old’s

Sandcastle‘s Original Ending Is Far Creepier

Frederik Peeters and Pierre Oscar Lévy’s 2011 graphic novel, Sandcastle—the source material for the film Old—is a chilling and self-contained horror story. Though the idea behind it is straightforward, the way it’s presented is deeply disturbing, focusing on psychological horror. The graphic novel differs from the movie in that it doesn’t try to explain the strange rules of the beach; instead, it powerfully explores the harsh realities of aging and the inescapability of death.

The comic concludes with Amesan recounting a tale of a king who desperately tries to avoid death by building a huge fortress around himself, only to realize he was actually constructing his own grave. Shortly after, each of the characters passes away from old age. The story then ends with the middle-aged daughter of the two children building a sandcastle, mirroring the king’s futile fortress.

M. Night Shyamalan’s film Old starts with a similar premise, but the story takes a completely different turn. The beach is actually a hidden testing ground where a dishonest drug company is running experiments on families to speed up their research. The main characters eventually escape by swimming away and reveal the company’s secret activities to the police. Although the ending provides closure, it leans towards a typical movie resolution rather than a truly unsettling or thought-provoking experience.

While the infant in ‘Old’ dies quickly, the woman in ‘Sandcastle’ – a fully grown body with the mind of a baby – truly captures the story’s heartbreaking ideas about lost time and wasted life. What makes ‘Sandcastle’ even more disturbing is that the reason for the beach’s curse remains a mystery. This ambiguity adds to the story’s haunting quality, unlike the movie, which tries to explain everything by blaming a clearly villainous corporation.

Old’s Twist Teases A Bigger Movie The Audience Doesn’t Get To See

Warren & Warren’s Discovery Of The Beach Is A Distractingly Bigger Movie Than Old

The story we see in the film is likely just a small part of a much larger, more complicated one. The researchers have been studying this beach for a long time, conducting numerous experiments. The tourists we’re following are part of ‘Trial 73,’ indicating that seventy-two other groups of people have already gone through the same experience, living their lives at a greatly sped-up pace. This hints at a much grander story that the audience doesn’t get to see.

The movie suggests a huge, hidden conspiracy behind the beach’s discovery and the Warrens’ realization of how terrifying it could be. The initial experiments, the setbacks, and the difficulty of attracting victims are all hinted at, but never fully explored. Each of these elements could have been a full-length movie on its own. The film leaves the details of the secret science, the cover-up efforts, and the fate of the missing people up to the viewer’s imagination.

Old’s Twist Raises More Questions Than Answers

Unlike Sandcastle, Old Opens The Door To Questions With No Answers

The movie Old doesn’t explain the strange rules of the beach – why time moves so quickly, or how people vanish and reappear when they try to leave. The graphic novel Sandcastle smartly skips these details. But by introducing a group of villains, Old opens itself up to questions about its own logic, questions that the story’s bizarre world can’t answer.

The research goals of Warren & Warren are flawed. Because organs decompose rapidly after death, they can’t observe the test subjects directly. Their data is limited to blood samples, and they didn’t use a control group, making it impossible to determine if any medications actually had a meaningful or consistent effect.

It’s even stranger that such a large operation was so easily discovered. One police officer managed to dismantle a global criminal network that had supposedly conducted numerous human experiments. The disappearance of so many tourists in a short time would inevitably attract international scrutiny. Even without any recovered bodies, the resort would quickly become known as a center for missing persons investigations.

Old is The Kind Of Movie That Could Have Used A Typical Shyamalan Twist

Old’s Core Mystery Deserved A Bigger Reveal

The idea of a beach that makes people age quickly is so unusual and captivating that viewers anticipate a huge reveal. This central concept in Old is among M. Night Shyamalan’s most imaginative, and it would have made sense for the story to culminate in a twist similar to those in films like The Sixth Sense or The Village.

The plot twist involving the pharmaceutical company in Old feels surprisingly mild, given M. Night Shyamalan’s history of shocking reveals. It actually creates more problems than it solves, and the facility is quickly taken care of. Ending such a dark and sad movie with a hurried, oddly positive conclusion weakens the story’s potential for a truly memorable and haunting impact; a more somber and artistic ending would have been more effective.

2025-11-21 05:13