Director Report Card: Lucky McKee (2022)

9. Old Man

I've been a fan of Lucky McKee since 2003, when “May” was released and instantly became one of my favorite movies. In that time, he's released seven more movies without a single one of them really crossing over into mainstream success. His last movie – which was pretty good! – went straight to the Lifetime Network. Despite this, McKee has continued to get a new feature released every few years. His latest work, “Old Man,” is among his strangest and most insular projects yet. Like nearly everything he's done, it's been met with a divisive reaction even among the people who are fans of the director. Yet I liked it!

An old man in long johns awakens in his cabin, in the middle of the woods. He looks for his dog, Rascal, which has pissed on his floor and disappeared. Despite his isolation, there is a knock at his door. A man named Joe, who claims to be a lost hiker, has found his way to the man's abode. He regards Joe with suspicion, interrogating him and holding him at gun point. Soon, the two men begin to reveal more about each other, learning they have more in common then they at first assumed. 

“Old Man” is, essentially, a two-man play. For nearly the entire run time, Stephen Lang's old man and Marc Senter's Joe are the only characters in the film. The cabin is basically the only location. With no prior backstory on either of these men, we have no idea who to trust or believe. The old man certainly seems unstable and dangerous, considering the ease with which he threatens people and the stories he tells of torture. Yet there's something shifty about Joe as well, his story often not lining up either. This is a set-up that draws tension from uncertainty. The audience is never sure which of these guys is crazy, or crazier at the very least. Who is a threat to whom? It's a simple premise that allows for a surprising amount of tension to build.

Adding to this suspense is just how isolated the entire film feels. We only get the briefest of shots of the forest beyond the old man's door. The glimpses of trees and sky were obviously added with green screen. The cabin is an obvious set, an intentional sense of artificiality being added to the proceedings. The effect creates an almost apocalyptic sense of solitude. For most of the story, it feels like the two principal characters might be the only people left alive in the world. Once a thunderstorm kicks in overhead, the oppressive emptiness only increases. It all adds to the movie's sense of unease and the focus the audience has on these two characters.

Despite shooting in such a limited location, “Old Man” is still fairly dynamic looking motion picture. It begins with a cool tracking shot, creeping over to Lang asleep on his bed. Frequently, there's some good use of camera movements. A slow pan over to a mounted cougar's head is one of the prettiest shots in the film. McKee even employs some dream-like colors are the film progresses. The camerawork is expressive but also emphasizes how cramped this location is, continuing to further the feeling of cramped unease. The cabin itself is meticulously designed, to feel both clattered and cramped, while also leaving enough room to be full of the kinds of shadows and visual depth needed to generate thrills. 

Stephen Lang has risen through the character actor ranks and attained a decent degree of star power. His titular role in “Old Man” seems similar to his part in “Don't Breath,” on the surface. Both are stories of creepy old men with intruders into their houses. Yet Lang really leans into the “old” adjective in the title. He begins the film mumbling, coughing, and drooling like an old coot. This proceeds a level of mega-acting that I haven't seen from the performer since “The Hard Way.” He hams it up to glorious, grotesque heights as he spins a yarn of torture and abuse and has frenzied conversations. Eventually, a pathetic side emerges as well, Lang doing a good job of showing the character loosing his bearings. It's a compellingly bizarre performance and shows that Lang is more than capable of carrying a whole movie.

Starring opposite Lang is Marc Senter. Senter has appeared in several Lucky McKee adjacent projects, like “The Lost” and “Wicked Lake” but starred in his “Tales of Halloween” segment. Senter often reaches for Crispin Glover-levels of twitchy weirdness in his performances. You can still see that element to his role in “Old Man.” Joe seems like a normal fellow, an average traveler with no ulterior motives. Yet the off-beat quality that always floats under Senter's quality definitely gives the idea that he's hiding something, which is perfectly suited to the story's needs. Joe is hiding something, we eventually learn, but the audience can't defeat the creeping suspicion that this is the case even before the reveal. In other words, Senter is perfectly cast. 

“Old Man” isn't just a creepy thriller about two guys with dark secrets, stuck in a cramped location with each other. Early on, Lang tells a rambling anecdote about a Bible salesman who came to visit him once and the violence that followed. He expresses his atheism during this speech, denying a belief in the existence of an “old man in the sky.” Considering the film's title, that line couldn't have been an accident. Later on, Senter has a similarly strong monologue, in which he describes how the stresses of life can build up on you, how bad luck never lets up some times. The characters may deny that they believe in God yet the misfortune piled up at their feet suggest fate is at play... Unless every man is his own “old man in the sky” and builds his own tomb from his own misdeeds, an idea the film returns to more and more as it goes on.

Throughout their conversation, the old man references his ex-wife with the kind of disdain you'd expect from a typical codger. At first, Joe claims to have nothing but respect and love for his own wife. Yet, as the evening winds on, he reveals secrets of his own. It's unsurprising that a story concerned with two guys, arguing and bickering about the problems in their lives, would eventually center around a mutual hatred of their old ladies. McKee's films have often studied the mechanisms of misogyny and this is at play in “Old Man” as well,  as the men quickly come to blame everyone but themselves for their crimes against women. 

If the presence or absence of God is another theme in the film, you can see this in the role ever watching eyes play. That mounted cougar head watches over the old man. It always hovers overhead from its corner of the cabin, watching everything that happens, the camera often centering in on its unending gaze. As the story continues, the lioness is quickly aligned with the wrath of a vengeful woman. This is made all the more apparent when an eye emerges from a fatal wound. It seems, if God exists in this universe, he's not an old “man” in the sky.

The somewhat surreal element to “Old Man” only increases as it goes on. In the last act, the film makes an unexpected turn towards magic realism. The old man begins talking about a magical purple water that can restore youth. This brings another interesting thread into the film, adding more layers to the title. We are all going to run out of youth someday. Most of us will become old men eventually. Joe is a man in the prime of his life while the title character is a doddering, old coot whose best days are behind him. By introducing the element of a fountain of youth into the story, it draws attention to how old principal characters are at opposite ends of the same journey. 

All of this proceeds an ending that I probably should have seen coming, that takes some of the subtext and integrates it into the actual narrative. The dream-like quality of the story becomes more blatant as the film heads into its increasingly surreal finale. At this point, any of the inconsistencies and strangeness that came before come into sharper focus. The ideas of youth, resentment towards woman, and the discussion of God all make a lot more sense as the credits start to roll. It may feel like a cheap, narrative rug-pull to some. Yet I found it to be a satisfying way to bring everything full circle, somewhat literally. 

I've probably made “Old Man” sound more pretentious than it actually is. That's what I like about the film. It is both a very simple story, merely about two guys in one location talking to each other. Yet a number of intriguing ideas are incorporated into a story that gets weirder as it goes on. I guess how much you get out of the film will depend on your willingness to play along with it. I'm not surprised to have seen some bad reviews for it. Maybe it's just because I'm already a Lucky McKee fan but I got a lot of it, in addition to enjoying Lang and Senter's performances. Whether it'll acquire the cult followings McKee's best films have, I can't say but I think I'm likely to revisits this particular little offering in the future. [Grade: B+]