Streaming (1)
Samenvattingen(1)
Ella is on the way back to her hometown with her kids for her sister’s wedding. The remote little village has changed a lot since she left: young people have long moved away, leaving mostly the old folks behind, seemingly forgotten by the rest of the world. When a huge thunderstorm hits the little town the night of the wedding, the residents of a retirement home start behaving strangely. Led by a giant retiree, a group of elderly inmates attacks the young caretakers with horrific brutality. Following a blackout, they break down the security doors and escape into the cold rain. The music attracts them to the wedding where soon Ella will have to fight for her family’s survival. (Netflix)
(meer)Recensie (3)
In terms of its technical execution, Old People offers a decent level of craftsmanship. The beginning, which culminates with the scene in which the main character figures out what's going on, is a great horror treat. But the bizarre idea of angry, murderous pensioners on which the whole film is based comes across as silly. The filmmakers failed to elevate the subject to the level of social allegory and remained with the mental optics of a pure zombie horror flick, which made Old People embarrassing to the point of being ridiculous.
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The social-critical aspect is extremely banal and literal, yet if the script had dug into it a bit more and at the same time not shoved it in the viewer's face, it could have had some potential (but then it should have also addressed the frequent contempt of the old for the young, etc., so that it is not so black and white). At the same time, I must admit that the director has the horror craft down pat, the night horror sequences are properly creepy and intense. In the stronger passages it reaches for four stars, in the weaker passages, when we watch a family melodrama or the main young heroine tells us in a voiceover that it is wrong to be mean to old people, oh yes, more like two.
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The scenes of the filthy and disgusting old men are surprisingly good, even disgusting in places, and their casting is equally top notch, but the rest of it is just awful. The story and the main characters are a disaster and expecting a deeper script would be a mistake. The very idea of old people getting the crap kicked out of them by families who haven't stopped by the retirement home for a couple of years only to soften up at the end over some sort of "family bonding spell" is totally hokey, actually, as is the film as a whole. I haven't been so amused by how stupid a film can be in a long time.
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