Holidaymakers with various medical conditions head to a luxury resort and wind up stranded on a beach (and film) that accelerates the ageing process.

Known colloquially as The Beach That Makes You Old, M. Night Shyamalan’s 2021 thriller is essentially a subplot from Lost that was abandoned for being too stupid. Like the ill-fated TV show, Old throws up all sorts of questions, including “how can someone 30 years into their film career have so little grasp of basic screenwriting?”, “what comes before a first draft?” and “why did they let this happen?”

That one can be at least partially explained by Shyamalan’s notoriety as a bad filmmaker giving his recent output a built-in audience regardless (or because) of its incompetence. Where The Last Airbender and After Earth saw him flounder under big-budget studio mandates, at least what you get now is pure, unadulterated Shyamalan, for better or worse. And it doesn’t get worse than Old.

For some reason the writer/director/actor is obsessed with exposition so lazy it sticks out like a Shyamalan cameo. The movie opens with some children asking all the characters, “What’s your name and what do you do for a living?” You know, like kids do. Not that the characters require prompting; one volunteers the information, “My name is Jarin, I’m a nurse,” three times, and another repeatedly tells us she curates exhibits for museums. None of this is pertinent information because it’s not a job interview. In fact it would be surprising if any of them ever worked again.

Shyamalan spends so long on this seaside census that he forgets to establish the rules of the beach that makes them old. Minor spoilers ahead – it is never clear if their brains are developing along with their bodies or if the only mental component is M. Night Shyamalan. Speaking of spoiling minors, two six-year-olds have sex in this film, which even Stephenie Meyer would probably think was a bit weird. So the girl gets pregnant but somehow survives pushing out what would presumably be a two-year-old baby, which dies “from lack of attention”, much like the script.

They also seem to have an inexhaustible supply of clothes that fit them as they all undergo Ant-Man-style size fluctuations, and a similarly extensive supply of racist and ableist commentary. The outcome is the most embarrassing movie M has ever made, succeeding only in making 109 minutes feel like four years of your life.