While on tropical holiday, a diverse gathering of the idle rich find themselves trapped inside a paradisiacal cove where they age at such an accelerated rate that their offspring meet, date, mate, and conceive before the sun sets. Perhaps the best way to approach this overlong Twilight Zone variation on Benjamin Button coming at you in reverse and at warp speed would have been through animation. As good as Alex Wolff can be, imagine the difficulty inherent in a 23-year-old actor playing a 15-year-old boy who ages fifty years. Even John Malkovich would find a challenge in being such a character. And did we really need to gracelessly ripen and putrefy a real life supermodel (Abbey Lee) or ask Rufus Sewell to add a note of misplaced messaging as the white billionaire who for no reason takes a pocket knife to rapper Mid-Size Sedan (Aaron Pierre)? Only Luis Buñuel (The Exterminating Angel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) was skilled enough to let his cast’s inability to leave go unexplained. To his credit, M. Night Shyamalan closes with a doozy of a reason, but not before dragging audiences through pages of laughable dialogue, scenes that repeat, and an unwelcome side trip to Slasher Film Land. That said, it’s been ages since I’ve taken away this much enjoyment from a Shyamalan picture. With: Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, and Thomasin McKenzie. (2021) — Scott Marks
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