Old Man Review

Last Updated on October 15, 2022

PLOT: An old hermit living far off in the woods gets his simple life interrupted when a lost hiker shows up.

REVIEW: I have always enjoyed Lucky McKee as a director. May and The Women were defining movies of their decade, and he has a way of presenting stories with a unique and intense approach. And though I prefer him as a writer and director on his projects, his eye and style are sometimes enough to shine through, with 2006’s The Woods as a solid example. Now he is back as a director only with his new movie Old Man.

Setting a story in one location is difficult to keep a film engaging and usually falls on whomever the lead is to carry the project. Old Man doesn’t quite nail the landing in terms of a flawless, thought-out script but nails the characters and tone. McKee works well with his razor-tight directing and helped with Stephen Lang chewing the scenery for ninety minutes, making this thriller quite the odd yet enjoyable experience. It isn’t much in terms of story, and the overall idea is pretty tried and true, but the real magic here is Lang and his dedication to the character.

In terms of character, Lang steals the show as the old man. Playing the role quite quirky and, at times, insane, Lang channels a bit of that late ’90s peak Nicolas Cage. Between the accent and overall sporadic jitters, his portrayal of the character feels uniquely his own and is captivating from the moment we meet him till the credits role. Marc Senter’s Joe is a wholesome, nice guy that has seemingly walked into the life of a crazy man and needs to play his cards right if he has any chance of walking out alive.

Seter does well with what he has script-wise and has a sort of boyish charm that fits with Joe’s innocent demeanor and plays well off of Lang. An issue I have with Joe is that he is almost too wholesome. The old man’s character is intense and threatening, yet Joe rolls over constantly and in situations where a bit of courage and conflict dialogue could have been a great war of words. But Seter does what he can with the part, opting for his natural charisma; see The Devil’s Carnival for his best role, and we get a couple of dramatic shifts that keep the pace up and tension constantly simmering between the two.

Lucky McKee adds a lot here as a director, utilizing the one location for everything it offers, even if there isn’t enough story to stretch the whole runtime. There are one-takes, unique blocking, and enough movement to keep even the most simple scenes engaging. He and Lang clearly understand each other, and the film feels at home when he lets Lang go off on his pacing tangents. The underlying mystery is about who can be trusted to be a reliable narrator, which doesn’t always work here. It’s too short of a story for the central point and not developed enough to elevate this to the level needed for a single-location mystery.

The issue that kept coming up during my initial watch was that this felt like a short story with a minimum feature-length agreement. Besides a flashback, we only get Seter and Lang to focus on, and the entire story seems anticlimactic when we get to the end of the tale and find out the truth. I must give credit for subverting my expectations, as I predicted a particular horror trope yet got a different trope instead. But because this doesn’t aim for anything new or groundbreaking, it could have easily fit into a forty-five-minute or shorter format. No fault of McKee as he steps up to the challenge, but the story could have used a bit of polish as I was far more captivated by the dialogue banter than where things ended up.

I had a really good time with Old Man. Stephen Lang gives an excellent, unhinged performance alongside some sharp directing courtesy of McKee, who is quite capable of shaping a great character alongside a simple yet effective setting. The story itself wasn’t anything special and hit some very basic story beats but overall, I ended up having fun. If you can focus more on the journey and less on the destination, you’ll dig Old Man, a unique and peculiar isolation thriller.

OLD MAN will be in Theaters, On Demand and Digital on October 14th!

old man

GOOD

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