M Night Shya­malan heads to the beach in the first trail­er for Old

Amidst the bizarre com­bi­na­tion of the Super Bowl’s usu­al pageantry and the guard­ed appre­hen­sion of its COVID-era iter­a­tion, last night’s broad­cast of the biggest night in Amer­i­can foot­ball also afford­ed a first look at a pos­si­ble movie high­light of our hope­ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed sum­mer. M Night Shya­malan has returned to self-con­tained sus­pense film­mak­ing fol­low­ing an inter­lude in the con­nect­ed uni­verse of fran­chise, and he appears to be in full form.

Super Bowl view­ers caught the first trail­er for his upcom­ing film Old, a brief spot that nonethe­less con­veys a dis­turb­ing and mys­te­ri­ous premise. One family’s day-trip to the beach is going to turn into a spi­ral of ter­ror, and not just because Dad keeps threat­en­ing to turn this car around and come back there.

In Shyamalan’s lat­est, par­ents Gael Gar­cía Bernal and Vicky Krieps bring their apple-cheeked young­sters for a get­away on a seclud­ed sec­tion of shore­line, only to find that they’ve turned into teenagers (Alex Wolff and Eliza Scanlen) after a mat­ter of hours. Every­one in the area seems to be age­ing rapid­ly, result­ing in fright­ful body hor­ror for some; the uncom­pre­hend­ing, pet­ri­fied daugh­ter instan­ta­neous­ly becomes preg­nant and ready to pop with­out any warning.

As is often the case with Shyamalan’s work, something’s afoot that will most like­ly be revealed in the third act with a great cin­e­mat­ic flour­ish, but what? Their lives, col­lapsed to the space of a day… Could it be that this fam­i­ly may actu­al­ly be mayflies under the impres­sion that they’re humans? This is but one guess.

One oth­er note: Universal’s ad con­cludes with the bold dec­la­ra­tion of ​“Only in the­aters this sum­mer,” famous last words uttered by many a prospec­tive block­buster over the past year. God will­ing, enough of the pop­u­lace will have been vac­ci­nat­ed by then to make moviego­ing a viable pub­lic leisure activ­i­ty again, but the fil­mog­ra­phy of M Night Shya­malan has taught us noth­ing if not that our words can often hold a grim, iron­ic fore­bod­ing of which we’re total­ly unaware.

Old is set for release in the US and UK on 23 July.