Old: Why [SPOILER] Died So Quickly

In one of the most shocking and disturbing scenes of M. Night Shyalaman’s Old, a baby is delivered and dies moments after birth. But why does it happen so quickly? Due to the warped logistics of time on the beach where the film is set, even the youngest member of the trapped group cannot survive long.

Based on the graphic novel Sandcastle, Shyalaman’s Old follows a group of families and couples enticed into visiting a private beach outside the resort at which they’re staying. They soon realize that time works differently on the beach, speeding up the aging process, aggravating any preexisting conditions and diseases Old characters have, and killing them one by one. It becomes a literal race against time as the group tries to find a means of escape.

One of the most bizarre deaths in Old is that of Trent and Kara’s newborn. Trapped on the beach, children Trent, Maddox, and Kara are subjected to years’ worth of hormones, growing pains, and a series of firsts in the span of hours. Teenagers Trent and Kara act on their new feelings, resulting in Kara’s accelerated pregnancy and subsequent childbirth. Because the group determines that they are all aging two years every hour, the moments that follow the baby’s birth amount to weeks without sustenance, and the child quickly dies of starvation. This is why the resort’s van driver, played by M. Night Shyalaman, gives the group an excessive amount of food for the children when he drops them off, as their bodies haven’t fully developed yet. It is also why, as the children age up per hour, they’re constantly hungry and eating to fuel themselves.

Infants need to be fed frequently at the beginning of their lives. If Trent and Kara’s baby had been fed as soon as it was born, it would have likely survived and aged at a high rate of speed. Because no one tended to it immediately, however, the child seemed doomed from the start. Conversely, in the graphic novel Sandcastle, the baby survives, outlives everyone else, growing into an adult woman. After everyone else died of old age, only the woman is left, crafting a sandcastle alone at the end of the story.

Old does not shy away from the brutality of life—people on the beach die suddenly and sometimes violently at the hands of a pharmaceutical company seeking cures. The baby’s death is especially difficult because it is so quick and could have been prevented if the rest of the group had been prepared. Overall, Old‘s ending likely wouldn’t have the same emotional impact if the baby had lived and never made it off the beach.