Little did I know when I wrote my review of X earlier this year and said it was often only creepy if you thought old people are creepy, they’d go and release a movie that shrugged, rolled up its sleeves, and made that the alpha and omega of its scary story.

Old People is about old people who either get sick and tired of nursing homes or are possessed by evil spirits. They kill young people. End of story.

I guess because they saw the ageism accusations coming, they inserted a text crawl at the start of the movie explaining how some cultures fear the old because they are the conduits for evil forces (or something). I’m not sure that’s actually in the movie though. It seems these cranky olds are just cranky at being put in nursing homes. Or maybe they’ve been poisoned or driven mad or whatever. They ain’t interested in clarifying. Old people are like The Birds, I guess.

Maybe they wanted to make a zombie movie but all the prosthetics were hard so they just paid some oldsters to moan, groan, and shamble at our young protagonists. I guess they aren’t zombies since they use weapons and have rudimentary skills… but if it moans like a zombie, groans like a zombie, maybe it’s a zombie.

Anyhow, there is an ick factor in making an ageist exploitation movie. But there’s also an argument that if a horror movie isn’t upsetting someone, then it’s not a very good horror movie. So, sure, it’s in bad taste, but when was good taste ever a requirement?

What it comes down to for me is whether the movie was effectively scary. And it kind of is. It knows how to generate an unsettling mood (using old people) and has some effective and brutal scenes (with old people). I’m not sure it was all that scary, but it really could land a punch at times. Unfortunately, the movie’s hackneyed ending really killed the mood and made me roll my eyes.

Not a bad little flick as long as you can stomach some brutal violence and the concept of oldsploitation movies. Really face-planted at the end though.

Score: 76