Life’s a beach and then you die.

Being as diplomatic as humanly possible, M. Night Shyamalan is a pretty divisive filmmaker. It’s been over two decades since The Sixth Sense, and after an impressive string of critical and financial successes, it’s fair to say things soon went off the rails.

With its eerie atmosphere, confident execution, and killer twist, The Sixth Sense was quite a calling card from the rookie director, and with both Unbreakable and Signs following suit, the Shyamalan brand was born. Alas, however, this buzz wasn’t to last, as a succession of stinkers saw the director’s stock rapidly fall.

After the thud of The Last Airbender and After Earth, things looked bleak. That is, until 2015’s The Visit saw the director going back to basics and, followed up by the one-two punch of Split and Glass, returning to something resembling his early form.

Despite this, there’s little doubt M. Night Shyamalan remains a Marmite filmmaker, with his films always likely to divide the room, yet, despite the wavering quality of his output, you can’t knock the man’s persistence and his continued determination to take big swings. And it’s right here, somewhere in the middle of all this, that Old resides.

Travelling to an idyllic tropical resort for one last family holiday before their divorce, married couple Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps), along with their two children and a group of fellow holidaymakers, find themselves on an excursion to a beautiful, secluded beach. While there, it soon becomes apparent that this remote cove hides a dark secret, as the group of strangers begin to age rapidly, reducing their entire lives down into just one day.

In the same vein as much of M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography, Old arrives ready and willing to split opinion right down the middle. For better or worse, Shyamalan brings everything he’s got to the table with this latest effort, and the results prove the perfect encapsulation of everything that’s good and bad about him as a filmmaker.

As a veritable smorgasbord of themes, Old offers a lot to dissect, however, like so much of Shyamalan’s filmmaking career, the film’s ability to engage with these ambitious ideas leaves a lot to be desired. Frustrating in a way that only a Shyamalan movie can be, Old presents a high concept setup with all the potential in the world, yet is ultimately undermined by poor execution.

On its own, the very concept of aging is pretty damn terrifying, yet throw the idea of doing so in fast-forward into the mix and you have yourself the stuff of nightmares. This central notion is absolutely ripe with potential and lays a very solid conceptual foundation to build upon, however, the results are bitterly disappointing.

Chief among Old’s issues is a script that, for all its undoubted ambition, just doesn’t do the story justice. With truly terrible dialogue delivered with little conviction by a talented but confused-looking cast, and an inconsistent plot that relies far too heavily on tedious over-explanation, Shyamalan’s writing falls disappointingly flat.

Even a cast this stacked has little chance of doing anything with the bum hand they’ve been dealt, as the usually reliable talents of Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, and Thomasin McKenzie are left adrift by an erratic and frequently incomprehensible script. There are certainly glimmers of light along the way, especially in our final moments on the beach as the ensemble’s talents are finally allowed to shine, yet they’re largely undercut by clunky writing and an uneven tone.

Dipping in and out of horror but regularly finding its tension undermined by a jarring goofiness, Old never truly gets its tonal balance right. Packed with existential dread, the film’s concept is a disturbing one with the potential to crawl right under your skin, however, Shyamalan’s writing just doesn’t know what to do to unlock this inherent horror.

With unintentionally hilarious dialogue and a penchant for awkward plot convenience, Old never truly finds its groove, however, after taking an age to get going, things briefly settle down as we get into the thick of the action. As the tension and trauma ramp up, we’re offered glimpses of what Shyamalan can do when he’s on form, and with a solid third act twist, the plot just about holds together despite its glaring issues.

Helping this along, Shyamalan’s keen visual eye comes to the fore once again, with unnerving editing and off-kilter camerawork demonstrating that, while he may struggle with his writing, he’s never lost his singular directorial vision. Despite the film’s problems, it’s clear Shyamalan had an absolute blast making Old, and this energy shines through with eccentric framing, disorientating camera movements, and unsettling edits that make the most of the limited setting.

It’s no coincidence that much of Shyamalan’s better work has been on a budget. His ability to build atmosphere on the cheap and with a restricted setup is undeniable, and Old demonstrates this well, as the film crafts a suitably unnerving energy through little more than creative camerawork, makeup, and suggestion.

The foundations are clearly there for something great, however, Shyamalan’s ongoing frailties regarding characterisation continue to be his downfall. Comprising little more than a tick list of convenient character profiles to suit the plot and burdened with unwieldy dialogue, the cast are left adrift and unable to craft much from the limited material available to them.

Thankfully, the film’s protagonists offer some form of emotional resonance the further we head into things, with the rapidly altering appearance of the children – played for the most part by Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie – allowing Old’s themes to hit the hardest, while the family’s latter moments together on the beach inject a level of poignancy sorely missing up to that point.

Brief though they may be, these moments do at least offer something to latch onto in an otherwise emotionally fractured muddle. If Shyamalan had found a way to delve deeper into these flashes of pathos and existential terror, he’d be onto something special, yet Old, like a good portion of the filmmaker’s back catalogue, marks another case of a promising concept let down by poor execution.

With an abundance of interesting ideas and a concept rich in horror promise, Old has all the potential in the world, however, M. Night Shyamalan’s lacklustre execution lets it down badly. In an industry increasingly obsessed with playing it safe, you must admire Shyamalan’s persistent singular vision, and while Old certainly marks another admirably big swing for the filmmaker, a dusty script, wrinkled plot, and a rotten tone leave the film lost at sea.

Old is in cinemas worldwide now.