- Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
- Written by M. Night Shyamalan, Pierre-Oscar Levy, Frederik Peeters
- Stars Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4U2pMRV9_k
Note that we’re giving away FIVE copies of the film. Check out November Movie Giveaway– “Old” (2021) for details
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
This is a good one to watch without even watching the trailer; going into this one as spoiler-free as possible would be the best experience as you try to figure out what’s going on. There’s a mysterious situation on an isolated beach, and two families must find a way out. It’s good!
Synopsis
SPOILERS! Watch the film first!
A family drives through the tropical jungle, on their way to the Anamika Resort. Guy and Prisca and their two children, Trent and Maddox, arrive at the fancy resort. Guy and Prisca are planning to tell the kids after the vacation that she’s got a serious illness and they’re splitting up as well. The kids make friends with Idlib, a little kid who says he has no friends. Idlib sends Trent a message using a secret alphabet, but he figures it out. The manager recommends a very exclusive, secret private beach on the other side of the island.
Meanwhile, another couple is on an isolated beach somewhere. The woman takes her top off and heads for the water…
Back at the resort, Dr. Charles helps Patricia, who is having a seizure. Her husband is Jarin. Guy’s family and Dr. Charles’ family get in the bus (driven by M. Night Shyamalan) to the “off limits” nature preserve. The driver has brought a ton of food for them, which confuses the guests. The area is surrounded by high cliffs, but they find the beach without any problems after going through a narrow path in the cliffs to reach it.
They spot “Mid-Sized Sedan,” a famous rapper on the beach; he’s just sitting on the rocks doing nothing. We recognize that he was on the beach with the woman earlier. The kids find a bunch of stuff on the beach. Toys, cell phones, sunglasses, and other things. Trent notices that there are no fish, but then a dead body floats by. It’s the woman from earlier that was with Mid-Sized Sedan. Sedan explains that she swam way out by herself, but he won’t say anything more; he’s had a nosebleed for hours.
Agnes, the grandmother, is having chest pains. Charles says there’s no phone reception. Jarin and Patrica arrive from the resort, they’re late. Jarin tries to walk back to the road, but he passes out on the way. Agnes stops breathing, and Charles tries CPR. Jarin guesses the kids’ ages, but he’s off by about six years. Prisca doesn’t recognize her now-teenage children.
Charles and Sedan try to go back out the way they came in, and they both wake up back on the beach. Charles cuts Sedan, but the wound almost instantly heals. Then the dog dies. Sedan says he has a blood clotting disease, and his dead girlfriend had just been diagnosed with MS.
Prisca had a (possibly) benign tumor that suddenly has gotten a lot worse. Charles tries to cut it out, but the skin heals over instantly. They have to hold the cut open with their fingers and pull the tumor out. She’s all better now! The dead woman, however, has decomposed into a skeleton. They figure out that time is acting strangely on the beach. Each sixty minutes that pass is equal to two years of aging.
Trent and Kara come back from doing whatever they were doing, and Kara is suddenly much fatter. She’s pregnant, and will give birth in about twenty minutes. The baby is born and dies almost instantly. Charles keeps going on about movie trivia; he’s got early onset Alzheimer’s that is not so early-onset now. Charles stabs Sedan to death, and it’s so quick and thorough that the wounds don’t heal.
The group figures out that one person from each party had some kind of long-term illness. Someone invited them or tricked them all into coming here. Jarin tries to swim to another beach, but his corpse floats back soon after. Like in the passageway, he passed out after a few minutes. Kara tries to climb the rock wall but also passes out, falling to her death.
One by one, time starts catching up with each of them in more and more severe ways. Maddox finds a journal that mentions the strange minerals on this beach that are affecting them. Trent notices a camera way up on the mountain that is recording them.
Then things really start getting out of hand. Will any of them survive?
Commentary
Watching the people try to figure out the “rules” and “process” of the beach is very interesting.
The subtle aging makeup is really good. Charles’ descent into mental illness is great. The grown-up kids seem awfully knowledgeable for six-year-olds, but it’s not so far-fetched considering how fast they grew up.
The conclusion, with the explanation given, makes a lot of sense. It’s brutal, and a little evil, but it makes a lot of sense. I don’t believe for a minute that an organization that useful would be shut down as quickly as is claimed here by the vacationing policeman. There’d have to be some government agency behind it all that would cover it up.