If anyone asked you what the most creepy Movie that you have ever seen in your life is, the answer most probably would be a David Lynch or an Alejandro Jodorowsky Film. There are some directors who are quite infamous for getting batshit with their narratives, characters, and cinematic styles. But what if someone told you that the most bizarre movie they saw all year was about a bunch of old people turning into murderous fanatics? How difficult would you find it to believe? Well, you need to watch it to know it. If you don’t plan to watch it, then prepare yourself to get this answer a lot in the coming years if “Old People” manages to become another pop culture favorite after its other German counterpart, “Dark.”
But what exactly is so bizarre and new about a group of people murdering another group of people? Well, the answer lies in the treatment. In the opening scene of “Old People,” a seemingly harmless old man gets up from his wheelchair and crushes the skull of his caretaker. Without any explanation or warning, we are thrown into this bizarre world where the older members of our society seem to have had enough, and now they set out to avenge the years of injustices done to them.
But then again, the plot isn’t exactly new. We have seen countless films centered around old people taking charge of their lives and doing something completely unexpected from them. But in this German movie, the old people are seemingly taken over by an evil spirit, which compels them to kill young people who have wronged their elderly or have a hand in breaking up their families. The film begins with Ella, who returns to her hometown with her two kids, Noah and Laura, to attend her sister’s marriage. However, she discovers that things aren’t exactly ‘normal’ in the town as the people from the old age nursing home are behaving somehow erratically. They eyeballed our lead characters as if something ominous was going on in their heads. However, Ella ignores the signs, and hence, as Chekhov’s Gun would have it, it turns out to be a fatal mistake for her and her ex-husband Lukas. Since both Lukas and Ella had a part in breaking apart the family, they are both on the radar of the oldies when all hell breaks loose.
In the second half, the film takes a superb-bizarre turn as the old people start getting up from their wheelchairs and using whatever they can as weapons. They begin slaughtering people who are aged under 50 and have not exactly been the family men or family women they were supposed to be. The younger people run around, hiding and trying to save themselves from their elders, who appear to have been possessed by some evil spirit. This causes a tremendous racket in the city as it’s now up to Ella and Lukas to save themselves and their children from the murderous older adults. As interesting as the story seems, it is absolutely bonkers when it comes to its treatment.
A couple meets their end when they are caught having sex by the elderly. Also, there is an older man who is absolutely impossible to kill since he holds some superpower of sorts. Most of all, there are those facial expressions the elderly make, devoid of any humane emotion or feeling, that makes you tremble in fear. So much so that the next time you come across the elderly in your house, you won’t be able to look them in the eye for a long time. This is how the film makes you feel. With all the gore and violence, the film takes a slasher or zombie movie route. But you can’t accuse the film of being “like a zombie movie” either, since the murderers in the film seem to be perfectly aware of their actions. But the violence and gore they indulge in will seriously make you think about the reason for their sudden pang of insanity, which, sadly, isn’t made very clear.
We are not sure whether this unexplained behavior from the “villains” works in the film’s favor or against it from an objective point of view. If the elderly were given a solid reason for their conduct, it would have put the audience’s minds at ease and would have kept them from feeling that they were losing their minds. What terrifies me more is the fact that, without a solid reason behind their actions, the seniors just suddenly decide to murder all the young ones without a warning or anything. That is, if you don’t consider that ‘creepy’ stare a warning sign of the upcoming doom.
While the murderous madmen are really not something that we haven’t seen before, there is a lot of blood, there are sounds of human bodies getting smashed, and there are screams and whimpers, quite common in any horror movie. Along with that, there is something so terrifying about “Old People” that puts this film in a separate league altogether. It’s almost akin to suddenly learning that the baby in your house, who can barely walk, is plotting to murder you in the most heinous way possible. Kudos to the writer and director Andy Fetscher, who has managed to keep the audiences on the edges of their couch and allowed them no escape from this 1 hour 41 minutes of superbly disturbing audio-visuals of a gang of sweet old people slaughtering their younger ones like they were pigs in a slaughterhouse, or worse!
See More: What Does The End Of Netflix German Film ‘Old People’ Mean?
