How Agatha Christie Inspired One Of M. Night Shyamalan's Strangest Thrillers
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M. Night Shyamalan doesn't always make great movies, but let it never be said that he makes boring movies. From the stone-cold classic that is "The Sixth Sense" to the wackadoo nature of "The Happening," the man certainly knows how to keep things interesting. Of all Shyamalan's output in recent years, "Old" stands out as perhaps his biggest swing. It's also, at least in part, inspired by the works of Agatha Christie.
While Christie and Shyamalan don't seem like a natural pairing, the director was inspired by her while making "Old." For those who may need a refresher, the film centers on a family taking a tropical holiday. They discover a secluded beach where they decide to relax in peace for a few hours. However, they soon discover the beach is making them age rapidly, distilling their entire lives into a single day.
The film itself was directly inspired by a French graphic novel named "Sandcastle." Less directly, it was inspired by the works of Christie. In a 2021 interview with Den of Geek, Shyamalan explained that, particularly in the early parts of the film, they were thinking about how Christie would set up characters in her books.
"We would say we were referring to certain scenes, like the restaurant scene where you meet all the characters, like, 'Alright, alright, [this is] the Agatha Christie restaurant scene. We're going to meet everybody in this scene, all the characters are going to get set up.'"
Old let M. Night Shyamalan do dark things in a beautiful location
Agatha Christie's books have gone on to inspire many direct movie and TV adaptations over the years, including Kenneth Branagh's recent Hercule Poirot trilogy. Shyamalan and many other filmmakers, though, were merely inspired by her writing to put their own twists on something that is Christie-like. After all, the best learn from the best.
In "Old," the child characters Trent and Idlib play a game early on by asking all the guests, "What's your name and occupation?" — establishing some basic information about them just like Christie does in her novels. "[We have] this sense of a group of people that would normally not be together and we learn what their occupations are, and we learn who they are and that they have particular traits," Shyamalan said in the same interview. "You're wondering what's going on and their relationship to each other, and they get picked off one by one."
The Christie similarities don't stop there with this movie either. Shyamalan also explained that "Old" brings the terror right out in broad daylight, rather than hiding it in the shadows. This is not unlike "Evil Under the Sun," one of the most celebrated Agatha Christie novels. Here's how Shyamalan explained it:
"I think another aspect of it that I found interesting is maybe I was drawn to this because Agatha Christie does some dark things out in the open or in very, very beautiful locations. Something bad happens on a vacation or an architectural dig, or these different setups. That juxtaposition of death and horror against something beautiful is something I love in her work as well."