They revisit a secret message given to them by Idlib, which Trent deduces is connected to an underwater coral passage. Believing that the passage will allow them to leave the beach without losing consciousness, he and his sister start swimming through the coral.
The families on the beach were merely guinea pigs. The now adult Trent and Maddox, the only two survivors by the movie's end, eventually escape from the beach thanks to a clue from Idlib, who tells them to swim through the (non-magnetized?) coral reefs.
In M. Night Shyamalan's Old, there are three intersecting mysteries. The first mystery is why is a specific beach is causing people who inhabit it to age at a highly accelerated rate. The second mystery is why do people blackout and end up back on the beach whenever they try to leave.
So, as Trent and Kara, another vacationer's daughter, become teens, they get cozy, and they end up getting Kara pregnant. Because the island is the way it is, she goes through a full pregnancy within the span of 20 minutes.
The Sinister Truth Behind The Beach (Final Scene) | OLD (2021) | Fear
Why did Crystal's bones break in Old?
Later she got invited to the beach to experiment on her calcium deficiency. As she grows old on the beach, she realizes there is more to life than just looks. Later in the movie her calcium deficiency gets so bad that her joints and bones begin to twist and crack leaving a morbid looking Chrystal to die.
It is soon revealed that most of the beachgoers have some kind of medical affliction, and while Mid-Size Sedan doesn't spell out his condition, he appears to be afflicted with hemophilia.
Because the group determines that they are all aging two years every hour, the moments that follow the baby's birth amount to weeks without sustenance, and the child quickly dies of starvation. This is why the resort's van driver, played by M.
The coral, for reasons unexplained, counteracted the effects of the cove's rocks. Once Maddox and Trent were able to swim through the coral, they were free. The damage to their lives, however, had already been done and couldn't be reversed.
After the premise of Old is revealed that the characters vacationing on a beach are aging quickly (one year every half an hour), a character says that "trial 73" is over. This is the big twist that is always part of an M. Night Shyamalan movie, including The Visit.
At the Tribeca Film Festival, Shyamalan said that the film's focus on aging reminded him of his father, who has dementia, and his children as he watches them grow up. During the event, Alex Wolff compared the film to the COVID-19 pandemic, "Coming out of COVID, it feels like time just stopped.
Patricia dies from an epileptic seizure and Chrystal—in a horrifying death scene—dies from her bones rupturing from hypocalcemia. Eventually, the only people left alive are Maddox and Trent, who are now middle-aged (now played by Embeth Davidtz and Emun Elliot).
Importantly, each family has at least one person with a pre-existing condition. Think multiple sclerosis, hypocalcemia, blood clotting disorder, mental illness, and epilepsy, for starters. Key to the storyline too is that no one can leave this oceanfront resort.
Old ends with Greg accompanying Trent and Maddox on their helicopter flight back to the mainland while Warren & Warren will presumably face justice for what they've done. Trent and Maddox will be reunited with a family member who had last seen these now fifty-something siblings when they were still just children.
What happened to Trent and Maddox in Old? This being an M Night Shyamalan film, there is still one twist to come: it turns out that Trent and Maddox did escape after all, and not only that, they've been able to inform the authorities of the beach and the sinister way it had been used.
It is, however, inspired by the French graphic novel Sandcastle. In Sandcastle, by Pierre Oscar Levy and artist Frederik Peeters, 13 people find themselves unable to leave a mysterious secluded beach. The graphic novel is all about the real existential crisis so many people face.
After the adults had perished in the night, only children Trent and Maddox were still alive and now in their fifties. But then Trent realised he still had a cryptogram from the kid Idlib at the hotel to decipher. He quickly worked out that the message read: “My uncle doesn't like the coral.”
While it received critical acclaim, twist master Shyamalan might just be its biggest fan, claiming that “from the moment I read this, I was changed.” It's easy to see why Sandcastle appealed so much to the director of The Sixth Sense, as it combines psychological and supernatural horror.
Maddox and Trent get their happy ending (kind of) – they are able to expose the dodgy pharma company, prevent any further victims, and are airlifted away after saying a sad and grateful farewell to Idlib, who is very much still a child.
