Old People (2022), On Netflix, Explained: In modern horror, the trope of the scary older person and gerontophobia is increasingly becoming commonplace. Old age and the figure of the elderly person have long been employed in spooky and slasher films to evoke emotions of fear and terror. From the elderly neighbors Castevets in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to creepy nude old cultists in A24’s Hereditary(2018) and Midsommar (2019) to the murderous elderly couple in Ti West’s porn slasher X, these films have tackled the monstrosity of aging itself as body horror and features the menacing figure of elderly in dark and disturbing ways.
German-Romanian filmmaker Andy Fetscher’s horror thriller Old People is the newest addition to the subgenre of elder horror in which the geriatrics turn into bloodthirsty zombies and terrorize the town to seek vengeance against the young people for treating them poorly. This slasher film portrays the elderly in their monstrous versions, who go batshit at night and then on a murderous rampage. It is a bizarre and unsettling film about the collective fear of aging and a cautionary tale about the importance of elderly care and compassion in alienated modern societies.
The film follows Ella, who is returning to her hometown with her two children to attend her sister’s wedding, but notices the radical change in the remote village since she left. Things quickly go haywire when the elderly residents of a retirement home begin acting strangely, break free from the facility, and mutate into violent murderers of young people. Ella has to protect her family from the possessed and zombified older people on a killing spree.
Old People spikes the eerie and spooky atmosphere of this Halloween season. This write-up attempts to break down the film’s aspects that require more clarity. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!! Refrain from reading the article and save it for later if you haven’t watched the movie. Happy Reading!
OLD PEOPLE SYNOPSIS & SUMMARY
PROLOGUE
Old People begins with an expository intertitle that serves as a foreword to what is about to come: “In times of yore, an avenging spirit was thought to inhabit old people. A dark power that took possession of the frailest members of the clan. And drove them to seemingly blind rage.” The brief opening scene shows a senile old man in a wheelchair, later identified as Mr. Reincke, listening intently to the weather forecast on the radio about a forthcoming heat wave and rise in temperatures across Germany. A young woman from Eldercare, who works as Mr. Reincke’s nurse, arrives at his apartment to check up on him, where he lives alone. When she finds the main door unlocked and the wheelchair empty, she moves through the messy apartment in search of him while the camera pans to a wooden frame that reads, “Solitude is the elderly’s due.”
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While she is looking for Mr. Reincke inside, he comes out of the shadows and attacks the nurse with a heavy oxygen cylinder. Mr. Reincke smashes her head repeatedly and kills her brutally in a blind rage. He comes to the window and screams viciously. At the same time, the neighboring buildings erupt in chaos as the elderly are staging a similar uprising, quite reminiscent of the ending of the 2015 horror film The Invitation. Through a voiceover, the narrator Laura (Bianca Nawrath), explains the collapse of society with a drastic increase in senile citizens. She is still bewildered by what really triggered the old people to mount an uprising when they started killing the young people.
WHY DID ELLA COME BACK TO HER HOMETOWN?
The story takes us back to the last few hot days of summer before the uprising when Ella (Melika Foroutan) drove with her two children — Laura, a teenager, and her brother Noah (Otto Emil Koch), a young boy — to her native hometown to attend the wedding of her sister Sanna. Sanna is getting married to Malick in the village church, and after that, a reception is arranged at their childhood home. Laura and Noah are excited about meeting their father and grandfather again, as they have been estranged for a few years. Ella separated from her husband Lukas (Stephan Luca) a couple of years back as she wished to move to the city for a better life, while Lukas preferred life in the countryside. This kindled a huge argument between Ella and her father, Aike, because he disapproved of Ella getting divorced and going away. When Ella moved to the city with her children to pursue her career, Lukas stayed behind in the countryside. Lucas was now in a romantic relationship with a woman named Kim (Anna Unterberger), a nurse at the Saalheim Retirement House.
When the trio arrives at Ella’s ancestral home, she has an emotional reunion with her sister Sanna and meets Sanna’s fiance. Sanna informs Ella that their father has been put up at the Saalheim Retirement House since they were both settled in the city. The sisters decide to go to the retirement home to bring back their father for the ceremony. They take Noah along with them while Laura sneaks off with her lover Alex to the woods, who take her to show a 2000-year-old stone structure built in honor of the ghosts of their ancestors that is supposed to protect families that stay together and curse anyone who disrespects and leaves behind their elders. Alex also shows Laura the part of the stone in which Lucas and Ella had carved their love in their youthful days.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE RETIREMENT HOME?
While traveling to the retirement home, Ella notices how the remote village has changed a lot after she left. Sanna explains that the town’s youth have moved away to the bigger cities, leaving the elderly behind, who are now under the care of the understaffed retirement home. When they reach the nursing home, Ella is shocked to find the pathetic condition of the old men and women, some immobilized and most of them sitting desolately without anyone to take care of them. Ella meets Kim there, who is an orderly at the place. Noah walks through the nursing home halls searching for his grandpa and finds loads of dead-eyed and crestfallen elderly. One of the old men looks fixedly at Noah menacingly and alarmingly. Soon after, he finds Aike in a room sitting by the window. When Ella greets him, he appears despondent and unresponsive. Ella apologizes to Aike for leaving him and hugs him, following which tears roll down his cheeks, recognizing his daughter. They tell him that they are taking him away for the wedding.
Sanna and Malick are married at the village church in a simple ceremony, and the family returns home for the reception. The family has a great time at the reception while Noah bonds with Aike. Laura and Noah force their parents to dance to the tunes of their family song, much to Kim’s chagrin, who is extremely envious of the estranged couple warming to each other now. Meanwhile, the elderly in the retirement home listen to the music from the reception and miss their youthful times. Blind rage is boiling within the facility’s inmates because of the neglect and disrespect shown by the younger people around them. One of the orderlies witnesses an old woman biting the electric cable, causing a blackout in the facility. When one of the orderlies rudely taunts them about not being invited to the party and misbehaves with an old woman, she retaliates and attacks him. When he throws her off, the old people transform into zombie-like creatures and brutally kill him with shards of glass. The man who earlier frightened Noah rises as the leader of the bloodthirsty killers, commands the others to kill all the orderlies, and rallies everyone towards the reception.
HOW DID SANNA AND MALICK DIE?
On the way back home after the reception, Lukas and Kim see an old man from the facility in an open field. While driving towards the village, they also witness a number of cars standing still on the road with dead people inside. They are aghast when they see a group of vengeful elderly on a murderous rampage, biting and killing young people. When they start chasing Lukas and Kim, they drive the car back to the wedding reception to alert the family. After the ceremony, the newlyweds retreated to the cabin close to the house, where Malick has prepared a romantic night for them. While the couple is consummating their marriage, the menacing leader enters the house, grabs a metallic orb from the stair, puts it in his socks, and attacks the couple in their bedroom. He brutally attacks Malick and throws Sanna down the stairs before she is also murdered.
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Soon afterward, full-blown chaos ensues when the old people who have turned into vicious beasts mindlessly start to surround the country house. Ella wakes up hearing the clamor of the old people assembling and goes in search of her children. She panics when she finds Laura missing, but she walks in, freaked out and stunned by the elderly men and women who have been gathered outside the house. Oddly Aike starts to play the piano in the middle of the night, puzzling Ella. Oblivious to what is happening outside, she goes to check Ella in the cabin, leaving Laura in charge of her grandpa Aike and her brother Noah. When she reaches the cabin, she finds Sanna and Malick dead. She even had to jump out of the window to escape the menacing old man and an old woman wearing Sanna’s wedding dress and the horde of elderly pursuing her. When she returns to the country house, she finds Aike and Noah missing. Lucas and Kim also now reach the house, and they start searching for Noah together.
OLD PEOPLE ENDING EXPLAINED
DOES ELLA PROTECT HER FAMILY FROM THE GERIATRIC APOCALYPSE?
When Ella finds Aike missing along with Noah, she takes out a gun and goes out along with Lukas to ask the hostile old people about Noah. Finding Aike among the horde of zombified elderly, she accuses him of taking Noah. While Ella struggles with the blood-seeking elderly, the menacing old man, along with his followers, enters the house. Kim turns out to be an inconsiderate and selfish woman when she saves herself and offers Laura instead. She still doubts whether Lukas has feelings for his ex-wife and wants to eliminate her and the children to win Lukas over. Ella and Lukas return to the country house in time to hear the commotion inside and saves Laura from the menacing leader. Lukas, with the help of Ella, subdues the leader and ties him up with tape. Lukas begs the leader to return Noah, who hasn’t done any harm. When Ella points the gun at him, he says, “What do you see? A human being or an animal? You don’t know what we have seen in our all too brief lives. I’d rather die than continue living like an animal.”
Out of nowhere, Noah appears in the scene and reveals that he had been hiding in the attic where Aike had taken him to hide. Noah’s asthma worsens suddenly, and the family comes together to make him stable and comfortable. Ella, Lukas, Kim, Laura, and Noah find themselves trapped in the house without a way to escape. When Ella goes to the restroom, Kim follows her. Kim knocks Ella down, pushes her out of the house, and locks the door behind her. When the old people start attacking Ella, Lukas and her children try to save her by pulling her inside the house. Ella gets caught in the door, and the elderly zombies inflict wounds on the body of Lukas. When Ella and Lukas are about to be killed by the old people, Kim decides to sacrifice herself when she understands the selfless love the family has for each other and realizes that there is no future with Lukas. Kim jumps out of the window and lands in the middle of the old people who get distracted enough, the free Ella and Lukas. Ella is pulled inside the house. However, Lukas sustained grave injury from the attack, and he soon passed away.
DO LAURA AND NOAH SURVIVE THE KILLING SPREE?
Laura suggests using the hidden underground tunnel connecting the country house and the cabin that Noah learned from Aike. Ella and her children make their way through the secret passage, but the elderly zombies catch up with them. Ella is caught by the killer zombies and urges her children to continue without her. Finally, Ella makes the ultimate sacrifice and dies at the hands of the elderly. Laura and Aike reach the other side of the passage safely, and dawn has already broken.
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At last, she reached a safe spot with cellphone coverage. Laura’s phone buzzes with notifications about the outbreak of elderly across the country and missed calls from Alex. When Laura calls Alex, he asks her to meet him by the beach as soon as possible. When they hurriedly try to escape, they are attacked by the menacing old man. The leader of the zombies arrives and swiftly takes Laura down. She starts singing their family song when he is about to kill Laura. Noah joins her, and Aike watches it with tears dripping down his eyes. The leader cannot carry on with his execution as he struggles to control the knife in his hands.
The spirits residing in the old people defend those who are together and curse those who break families. In the end, Aike intervenes and shoots the old man, thus saving his grandchildren. He confesses his love for his grandchildren, and the trio makes their way to the beach. Alex meets them there with a boat, and he hesitantly lets Aike get on the boat. As the four survivors, Laura, Alex, Noah, and Aike, ride away on the boat, they see a mob of zombie-like old people gathering on the beach.
OLD PEOPLE THEMES EXPLAINED:
METAPHOR FOR “RESPECT YOUR ELDERS”
Old People serves as a metaphor for “honor your elders” as it points to the consequences of exploiting the elderly and their dissipated role in society. The opening sequence of the film hints at a supernatural force, a vengeful spirit, that targets and transforms the older generation into mindless killers. This spirit is, in fact, a symbol of the anger and frustration they experience when they are often left to loneliness and isolation. The film underlines the treatment of senior citizens like abandoned and overcrowded animals and the resultant attacks due to the blatant disrespect and disregard for their age and experience. The film also showcases the horrors of old age through physical decay and body horror and points to the need for love and care in their last days. The animalistic dehumanization of older people by the younger generation is the rationale for violence and brutality against young people.
WEAKENING FAMILIAL BONDS AND VALUES
Another causative factor for this cannibalistic outrage is the beliefs associated with the monument Alex found in the woods. Alex explains how the deity curses anyone who disrespects and leaves behind the elders and defends those who are united together. The weakening familial bonds and loss of family values also enraged the town’s pensioners. They might have attacked the marriage ceremony because they are enraged at the lack of family bonding and closeness where members stay together under one roof. The old people harm and kill everyone who has somehow broken families or expressed their doubts about love. Sanna expresses her doubts about their love forever to Malick, Kim shows her selfishness and self-centered nature when the kids are in danger, and the broken marriage of Ella and Lukas contributes to the hatred of the elderly towards all the couple. Thus, the elderly eliminated all those who have kept them apart from their family.
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NEGLECT AND MISTREATMENT OF THE ELDERLY
In Old People, the elderly feel a deep rage and vengeance towards the younger generation because they have abandoned and neglected them and restricted them to retirement homes where neither their physical nor emotional needs are met. Ella and Sanna scarcely visit their father in the care facility despite their love and affection for him. In the city’s hectic life, they overlooked the need to provide affection and compassion to their father. The overcrowding of senile citizens in retirement homes and the behavior of the nurses and orderlies towards the helpless old people prompted them to a blinding rage, resulting in the ensuing rampage. The care facility in the film lacks basic personal hygiene and unsanitary conditions, where some are even immobilized. Towards the film’s end, Laura asks Aike whether there ever was a time when the younger generation behaved better to avoid such disastrous attacks. When Aike replies that he does not remember far back, it points to the decades of abandonment and exploitation the elderly has been put through by the present generation.
