M. Night Shyamalan is one of the most notable directors in Hollywood, with his films being both acclaimed and despised, depending on who’s asked. After a notable lull period, he began to experience something of a comeback in the 2010s, with this carrying over in the 2020s. One of these films was the movie Old, and unbeknownst to most who went to see it in the theaters, it was actually based on a graphic novel.
Old loosely adapts the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Lévy, and given that book’s relative obscurity, it’s understandable why most don’t know of this fact. There are definitely some similarities between the two versions, but the major differences help to differentiate them entirely. Through these divergences, the movie incarnation also inverts what many expect from the tropes of the director of The Sixth Sense.
Sandcastle Is One of the Most Obscure Graphic Novels to Be Turned Into a Movie
Released in 2011 before being translated into other languages, Sandcastle was the French graphic novel that served as the basis for M. Night Shyamalan’s Old. One of the protagonists is a jeweler named Amesan, who comes to a beach that’s soon populated by other characters.
These include a young woman who goes skinny-dipping, as well as different families on vacation. Said characters are Robert and Marianne, their dog Elvis and their children, Felix and Zoe, along with Charles and Nathalie, Nathalie’s mother and Charles and Nathalie’s children, Louis and Sophie. That’s before being joined by others, with the cast all experiencing a particularly strange phenomenon while on the beach. Not only does Nathalie’s mother die unexpectedly, but the kids all visibly age a few years. This leads to two of them succumbing to puberty, resulting in Zoe becoming pregnant and giving birth to a child in short order.
Eventually, the occupants of the beach in Sandcastle realize that they age exponentially every half hour, with any attempts to leave the beach only resulting in them being rendered unconscious. Likewise, they watch in horror as others run toward the beach, only to end up being shot to death.
As their age rapidly increases, the group comes to terms with their fate, with the mysterious Amesan telling a story about a king who tries to evade death. Building a massive castle around himself to keep death away for seven years or more, he realizes after the seven-year mark that he’s only been building his own tomb. In the end, the characters are almost all dead, with the only survivor being the daughter of Louis and Zoe. Now middle-aged herself, she sits alone to make a sandcastle on the beach, giving the story its morbid title.
Old Makes Several Changes to the Story of Sandcastle
A couple walks into the water to their deaths in the Sandcastle comic book, the basis for M. Night Shyamalan’s Old.Image via Atrabile
Old came out 10 years after Sandcastle, with M. Night Shyamalan having been shown the original graphic novel by his daughter. Many of the character archetypes and purposes are the same, albeit with different names and far more focus on their interpersonal relationships.
For instance, the main characters are a married couple named Guy and Prisca Cappa, along with their children, Maddox and Trent. As in the comic book, it’s revealed, upon entering a beach on a mysterious resort, that this location strangely ages them all. This results in the quick death of an elderly woman named Agnes, as well as the escalation of certain medical conditions for each of the characters, such as Prisca’s ovarian tumor. A surgeon named Charles, who’s also on the beach, later has to remove Prisca’s tumor through an impromptu surgery, with the wound healing quickly.
Trent and his sister age quickly on the beach, as does another young girl named Kara. This results in Trent and Kara producing a child with each other after walking off from the group, emulating the story of the comic book. The difference is that, instead of surviving until the end, the baby soon dies from neglect due to the passage of time on the beach.
Eventually, the other adults die from various circumstances, including each other, with Charles’ worsening schizophrenia having him kill a rapper named Mid-Size Sedan, who was also part of the group. Eventually, the only ones still around are the now adult versions of Maddox of Trent, who recall a message given to them by a local boy named Idlib to successfully escape the beach without falling unconscious. From there, it’s revealed that the beach is actually the testing ground for a pharmaceutical company, with the effects of the beach used to test the drugs’ effects in a single day. With the company behind this experiment exposed, Maddox and Trent reunite with their shocked aunt.
Old Inverts the Traditional Shyamalan Twist Ending
In the case of the majority of his movies, most M. Night Shyamalan films are known for having “twist endings.” Examples include the revelation of the main character being a ghost in The Sixth Sense, Mr. Glass’ evil scheme in Unbreakable, or the actual time period in The Village.
In many cases, these twist endings work and are well-received, with The Sixth Sense largely being seen as a mystery movie classic. As the reception to Shyamalan’s movies began to decrease, however, these twist endings were increasingly disliked and seen as proof of the poor writing in the director’s newer films. Thankfully, later Shyamalan works have helped to restore his reputation among moviegoers thanks to newer movies in the 2010s and 2020s, and he’s also experimented a bit with his formula. This is nowhere more apparent than in Old, which threw even fans of the original graphic novel for a loop in terms of how it ended.
Not only did this go against the grain for the director, but it also gave the story as a whole a much more hopeful vibe, even if there’s a bevy of body and psychological horror on the way there. Old made many changes to the story of Sandcastle, especially when it came to how the plot came to a close. For one, it actually (mostly) explains the circumstances of the beach and the people there, making for a much less ambiguous premise. Conversely, by having Trent and Maddox survive and expose the pharmaceutical company, it offers a more hopeful and triumphant conclusion.
It’s shown that there have been several deaths related to these clinical trials, and as morbid as it sounds, the revelation of what’s going on finally solves the mystery behind countless murders. Even if Trent and Maddox’s reunion with their aunt is now bittersweet because of the deaths of their parents and their increased age, it’s still a victory, given how the two survive and singlehandedly bring an evil company to its knees. This is much less victorious than the bleak and ambiguous storyline of Sandcastle, which never quite explains what’s going on beyond the fact that the beach ages its occupants.
Conversely, while the baby in that version of the story survives, her mortality isn’t hopeful, as she’s poised to soon die alone on the beach without ever experiencing much of anything or knowing the circumstances of her fate. It’s a much harsher ending, and it’s no surprise that Shyamalan instead went with a more “Hollywood” direction for his version.
Old does and doesn’t have a Shyamalan “twist” ending, depending on how it’s looked at. Given that it’s a fairly positive conclusion, this less negative, less “knife-turn” of an ending could be seen as the reverse of what the director is known for. In fact, given that it mostly explains the beach and what’s going on, these final minutes could be seen as a satisfactory and necessary addendum more than any sort of twist. This could be compared to the ending of the movie Signs, which wasn’t a twist so much as a revelation.
It’s even arguable that the ending of the original graphic novel was more of a traditional Shyamalan ending, with the lone, seemingly doomed survivor being the reason why the story is titled Sandcastle. After all, the idea of building sandcastles on the beach is one associated mostly with childhood, and the character in question was essentially still a child, one who was very literally “of” the beach itself. Adapting that ending would have been particularly jarring for some, and it’s unknown if it would have made the same amount of money.
Old made $90 million in terms of box office success on an $18 million USD budget, and this was during a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was still keeping moviegoers away. Such a dour ending, especially at that time, might have simply been too much, with the version of Old that audiences got having just the right amount of darkness and hope.
- Release Date
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July 23, 2021
- Runtime
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108 Minutes