Old: M. Night Shyamalan’s Cameo Role Explained

WARNING: Major spoilers for Old below.

M. Night Shyamalan has a lengthy cameo role in his newest thriller Old, but who does he play? Based on Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters’s graphic novel Sandcastle, Shyamalan tackles the horrors of aging in an accelerated setting. While Shyamalan has held bit parts in many of his movies, Old features one of his longest cameos yet.

Old follows a family vacation turned sour. While visiting a luxury resort with their children, estranged couple Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) are invited by the hotel manager to take advantage of an idyllic private beach. Upon arriving with a handful of other couples and families, Old‘s cast of characters begins to notice they are aging at an alarming rate and cannot escape the beach. Little do they realize they are unwilling test subjects for an insidious pharmaceutical company’s research.

M. Night Shyamalan’s cameo role in Old is his most recognizable. Not only does he play an unnamed resort driver who brings the families to the beach, but he also monitors their progress from afar, like a filmmaker. Guy and Prisca’s rapidly aging children, teenaged Trent (Alex Wolff) and Maddox (Thomasin McKenzie), see that someone is watching their ordeal from atop one of the ridges surrounding the beach. Though it seems to be one of Old‘s unanswered questions, toward the end of the film, it is confirmed that the driver has been working for the pharmaceutical company, filming the chaos down below and reporting to the higher-ups on who has perished. The next day, he incorrectly observes that the older versions of Trent and Maddox have died swimming through the coral tunnel and returns to the lab with his findings.

Despite the lab’s purported good intentions, the participants of its experimentation needlessly lose their lives to the pursuit of curing disease. The fact that the beachgoers are aging out of control and dying off so brutally and quickly while someone quietly monitors them is one of the most concerning aspects of the movie. Of all the roles Shyamalan has played, his character in Old is arguably the most disturbing of them all.