A great horror film is never solely about the events that are transpiring on the screen. The metaphorical nature of the antagonistic force in horror is as old as ghost stories told around a camp fire. Similarly, it’s been commonplace ever since the days of George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, to tell a story about a societal issue, thinly veiled under a gory tale of poor unfortunate souls dying off one-by-one. The new German language horror film on Netflix, Old People, has its sights firmly set upon making some commentary on the treatment and abuse of old people in poorly-kept retirement homes.
The story follows the outbreak of an inexplicable uprising of abandoned or forgotten geriatric folks, who have supernaturally been imbued with extreme strength and a vicious, murderous rage against younger people. This all unfortunately occurs during the wedding of Sanna (Maxine Kazis) and Malick (Richard Manualpillai), in a mostly abandoned small German village, where the population is almost entirely made up of senior citizens and nursing staff from the local old folks’ home. There we follow the travails of Ella (Melika Foroutan) and her irritating children, who still blame her for the break-up of her marriage to Lukas (Stephan Luca). During the night of the wedding, the large family home is swarmed by what seems like half the pensioner-age actors in Germany, bent on killing them all in horrific ways.
The film isn’t completely without merit. Some of the gore effects are pleasantly icky, and it’s all competently shot, bathing the small town in a thematically apt golden twilight during early scenes before the darkness literally and metaphorically descends. The trouble is that for all this wants to take a novel approach, it’s little more than a bog standard home invasion-style zombie movie. What’s more, characters inexplicably stand around to die when required by the plot, but at other times inexplicably avoid harm despite being stuck in a throng of murderous elders for several minutes. It’s sloppy and inconsistent, and only further drains away engagement.
The characters are also uniformly underwritten and mostly unlikable. There are also several side-plots, including a, ‘will-they-won’t-they?’ threat of a romantic reunion between Lukas and Ella. Much to the chagrin of his new girlfriend Kim (Anna Unterberger). It also doesn’t help that there are three different characters in the film who are blonde nursing staff, played by similar looking actors, leading to confusion early on as to whether the one in the prologue is one we see later. So by the end it’s all but impossible to maintain any interest in this tired, confused, and geriatric horror experience.
The saddest part is that there clearly is a statement trying to be made about the mistreatment, abuse and negligence perpetrated on the elderly in under-funded and outdated nursing facilities. As well as this, there’s a running theme about people shutting away and forgetting the old that would have made a sincere and interesting point in better hands. However, as it stands there’s little to recommend this film to anyone other than horror film afficionados and completists.
Available now on Netflix