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M. Night Shyamalan’s cameo in Old continues one of the director’s biggest trends — and gives it a meta-edge that’s actually kind of perfect.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Old, now playing in theaters.
M. Night Shyamalan typically appears in many of his films in extended cameo roles. In The Sixth Sense, he’s the psychiatrist Dr. Hill, and in Unbreakable, Shyamalan is seen with drugs and is accosted by David Dunn. Meanwhile, in Signs, he appears as the man who accidentally killed Rev. Graham Hess’ family, and in Lady in the Water, he appears as an underappreciated writer. He continues this trend with an appearance in Old, as part of the staff of the resort who traps a group of visitors on the strange beach where people age at intense rates. Notably, his role in the film has a meta-level to it that even his previous cameos lacked — and it’s quietly a clever way to appear in his own film.
In Old, visitors at a tropical resort are given an invite to a private beach, but what they’re unaware of is that being on the beach accelerates the aging process to an intense degree, while also making it next to impossible for someone to escape the beach. Shyamalan appears as the bus driver who drops them off at said beach, but he seems keenly aware of the fate of anyone who ventures into the area, refusing to help carry the group’s supplies and quickly claiming to head back to the resort — leaving them on their own to suffer a terrible and horrifying fate.
The driver then positions himself atop the nearby cliffs and sets up a small computer station. Armed with a powerful camera, the driver is revealed to be monitoring the progress of all the visitors, analyzing how the changing years affects their illnesses. Turns out he’s part of the program dedicated to experimenting these people, observing how they age decades in a day, thus providing years of important research.
With it, the driver and his compatriots — revealed to work within a lab on the island — are able to create new medicines. The group claims to want to save lives above anything else, and the grisly act is — at least in their minds — off-set by the potential lives they could save. However, the plot is undone when the last two survivors of the beach escape and reveal the truth to the world. The driver is presumably one of the people arrested at the end of Old, along with the rest of the organization, who have their crimes exposed at the end.
The driver actually has a surprisingly fitting position within Old. Watching the dawning horror of the visitors on the beach from afar, the driver is effectively the director of the story in-universe. He brings them to the beach in the first place, and he watches through his camera, recording them and chronicling their lives — much like a director.
It’s a very meta role for Shyamalan, allowing him to film the narrative within the universe Old and in real life as well. As a cameo, it’s a very fitting one for the director to take on, and it’s a great little meta-take on his habit of appearing in his own films, and viewers can catch it now with Old now playing in theaters.
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