‘Old People’ (2022): For They Are Great in Number

Directed by: Andy Fetscher || Produced by: Benjamin Munz, Florian Schneider

Screenplay by: Andy Fetscher || Starring: Stephan Luca, Melika Foroutan, Bianca Nawrath, Otto Emil Koch, Daniela Galbo, Paul Fassnacht, Louie Betton, Gerhard Bös, Eveline Hall

Music by: Christopher Bremus, Steven Schwalbe || Cinematography: Ralf Noack || Edited by: Marco Baumhof,
Andy Fetscher || Country: Germany || Language: German

Running Time: 101 minutes

While I tend to be drawn to grounded, violent action-movies that rely on stuntwork over digital FX (e.g. The Raid [2011], The Night Comes for Us [2018], Extraction [2020, 2023], John Wick [2014–2023]) or biopunk science-fiction headlined by memorable creature-designs (e.g. Alien(s) [1979, 1986, 1992], Predator [1987, 1990], Tremors [1990-2004], Skull Island [2017]), I am also a sucker for succinct, weird high-concept premises that involve characters trapped in memorable locations (e.g. Cube [1997], Green Room [2015], In the Tall Grass, The Platform [both 2019], etc.), characters forced to perform a peculiar task in a limited timeframe (e.g. Run Lola Run [1998], 60 Minutes [2024]), bizarre genre combinations (e.g. Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy [2004, 2007, 2013], Blood Red Sky [2021], A Place to Fight For [2023]) or stories that shift genres partway through (e.g. Audition [1999], Cabin in the Woods [2012], Bone Tomahawk [2015], One Cut of the Dead [2017]).

The latest film I’ve seen to execute a memorable oddball premise with style is the German film Old People by writer-director Andy Fetscher. Referencing both the aging societies of Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere as well as the generational tribalism common to modern Internet discourse, Old People uses a variety of tropes popularized by George A. Romero’s Dead trilogy (1968, 1978, 1985) to comment on how senior citizens are treated and perceived by, well, younger people. Old People’s direction is not the smoothest execution of a weird idea in genre filmmaking, by any means, but it is well shot, paced, and takes its otherwise goofy central concept seriously as these sorts of genre movies should. I suspect the movie won’t please many audiences (see my ultimate recommendation below) and may even come across as wannabe edgy to certain viewers, but Fetscher and company are adept at building narrative tension around relatable characters who face a not-so-mindless threat.

The majority of the action in Old People takes place in an unnamed, nondescript village where a dilapidated, understaffed nursing home unleashes havoc on a local wedding planned by the main cast. Thankfully, the movie skips that wedding for the most part.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Old People is its prologue: The film starts with a wonderful, simple introduction to Germany’s senior citizenry losing their minds when a travel nurse visits one of her elderly patients in a high-rise apartment complex; upon entering, she finds the place in disarray, the lights out, and a certain individual behaving… strangely. To say this opening sets the tone for the rest of the film would be an understatement, as it not only establishes the movie’s “antagonists” in media res, but also previews Old People’s identifiable camerawork and moody yet never incoherent lighting. Even the brief yet intense nature of the prologue’s gory violence works without watering down the suspense of the primary storyline, though I could’ve done without the digital blood squibs (I can always spot them!).

The movie’s weaknesses lie in (1) the predictable Night of the Living Dead (1968)-tactics our primary characters resort to by the end of Act Two, where the main cast barricade themselves in a defensible location while the titular mob attacks in waves; (2) how too many characters approach ominous closed doors with apprehension when they should just keep everything locked (that old cliche); and (3) the way a major character (Daniela Galbo) betrays her group when the chips are down thanks to a divorced family/love-triangle trope. On principle, I don’t mind point #1 given how well shot the violent horror is throughout Old People, as well as how threatening the elderly “zombies” are, but points #2 and #3 feel like mediocre Hollywood screenwriting cheats the likes of Roland Emmerich (a German himself), Michael Bay, or Brett Ratner might use.

Old People still feels unsettling no matter what, though. The gradual transformation of the senior citizen cast (e.g. Gerhard Bös, Eveline Hall) from frail, sad folks pushed to the corners of society to monstrous, vengeful ghouls is creepy and sells the primary conflict despite how fantastical the movie sounds when described out loud. Subtle hints of supernatural flourishes (e.g. unnatural group behavior at the national scale, repeated unsettling background sound FX, etc.) further coalesce with the movie’s overarching psychological horror.

All things considered, Old People is another respectable, straightforward genre film that depends on a nontraditional premise for the majority of its appeal (see also Piggy [2022], 65 [2023], Trap [both 2024]), but whose execution is not so unparalleled that I can recommend it to most audiences. I liked the film well enough to place it in my growing catalog of “weird high-concept movies I’ll remember,” but perhaps not enough to revisit it often in the future (see Under Paris [2024]). Again, though, I give the filmmakers credit for taking their bizarre script seriously and not devolving Old People into campy satire or watering down their horrific violence to achieve greater mainstream recognition.

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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: Outside of a handful of adult-oriented big-budget adaptations of comic book properties in the contemporary era (e.g. Deadpool [2016], Joker [2019], The Suicide Squad [2021]), most movies that most audiences see aren’t too hard-edged or creative, so it’s nice to have a steady stream of weirder genre movies, particularly horror films, that provide grittier experiences based on “bad taste” screenplays. Old People isn’t on the directorial level of many of the gems I listed in the first paragraph of this essay, but it is good-looking and entertaining as hell.

— However… I shake my head at obvious drawbacks of Old People’s scripts that recall the shortcomings of many generic Hollywood movies, such as obvious digital gore, needlessly treacherous side characters, and questionable decision-making by most castmembers throughout the story.

—> ON THE FENCE

? I thought it was fitting how Grandpa Aike (Paul Fassnacht) used that pistol in the end.