Oldies — The Summer Grandpa Became a Ghost (And Nobody Noticed)

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Forget the factory-made jumpscares, the artificial volume spikes designed to make you fling your popcorn into the air, and the plastic-flavoured prefab terror. In Old (2022), co-directed by Fernando González Gómez and Raúl Cerezo—a true genre guerrilla and the mastermind behind Eye Slice Pictures—fear oozes from the most rotten corners of our everyday lives. We’re talking dementia, family abandonment, ageism, and the foul sweat induced by an unbearable heatwave in central Madrid, hovering around a suffocating 42°C.

The film kicks off with a sucker punch straight to the viewer’s jaw—a statement of intent that leaves you pinned to your seat. Honestly, it’s a killer opening, starting with the suicide of Rosa, the family matriarch, hurling herself into the void in a tragic, sordid sequence crowned by a brutal overhead shot that immediately sets the film’s funereal and oppressive tone. From that traumatic moment, the story locks you inside Mario’s cramped flat, where his newly widowed and increasingly unhinged father, Manuel, moves in. This triggers a spiral of madness that seems to infect all the elderly in the city, who keep repeating a cryptic, supernatural warning while staring into the void: "I hear them."

It’s clear the film boasts stellar direction, crafting a claustrophobic atmosphere that smartly draws from Spain’s unsettling socio-political fantasy-horror and slow-burn suspense. Cerezo and González Gómez, who already proved their technical synergy in their debut The Passenger, here plan every shot with meticulous, sickening intent. They constantly play with depth of field and the use of the split diopter lens (beloved by directors like Brian De Palma) to keep the grandfather sharply in focus—looming and threatening in the foreground—while the rest of the family bickers in the background, oblivious to the real danger. Cinematographer Ignacio Aguilar floods the screen with ochres, browns, and a light that literally makes you sweat, working shadows and silhouettes so masterfully you can’t help but think Vilmos Zsigmond in Obsession must’ve been cribbing from Cerezo’s playbook.

But if there’s one pillar that lifts this film head and shoulders above the rest, it’s its casting. The acting is superb across the board, and it deserves to be shouted from the rooftops: the old people are brutal. This isn’t some cuddly grandpa begging for affection in a corner—these old folks devour the screen, especially lead Zorion Eguileor. His portrayal of Manuel oscillates with unsettling precision between senile fragility and an incomprehensible, lethal threat, dominating the story with a physicality and disturbed gaze that earned him the well-deserved Best Actor award at the prestigious Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.

Alongside him, Gustavo Salmerón delivers a standout performance as the inept, reality-denying son completely overwhelmed by circumstances he refuses to accept. His passive dynamic clashes constantly with that of his new partner, played by Irene Anula—the only one with the sense to see the real danger coming—and his teenage daughter (from a previous marriage), portrayed by Paula Gallego. It’s the macabre details and sickening touches that sear into your retinas and won’t let go, like the image of the old woman’s blue eyes in the morgue—a moment that simply freezes your blood amid the sweltering heat suffocating the characters.

Thematically and discursively, Old stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Paco Plaza’s The Grandmother, proving that geriatric horror and bodily decay have become one of contemporary genre cinema’s most honest and disturbing veins. It forces us, without mercy, to confront the old age that Western society shuns, marginalises, and prefers to hide away in care homes. Yet its brilliant tension structure—where a domestic setting (a real flat, no fake studio walls) slowly mutates into an inescapable death trap—also evokes the twisted, labyrinthine madness of Zack Cregger’s Barbarian.

After simmering the family drama on a very low heat for its first two acts—thanks in part to the script by Raúl Cerezo, Rubén Sánchez Trigos, and Javier Trigales, which steers clear of pure action in favour of a more paranoid, Rosemary’s Baby-esque pulse—the climax literally throws the house out the window. It abandons psychological restraint for absolute delirium and visceral violence. It’s an eruption that brutally shatters the film’s hyperrealistic, controlled tone, delivering unhinged visual flourishes that directly recall the finale of Ghostbusters, complete with a stormy, strangely coloured sky and a cosmic revelation that bulldozes everything in its path without apology.

The Good

Sickly atmosphere: The creation of a purely sickly atmosphere through meticulously disturbing sound design and the suffocating score by Eneko Vadillo, who uses aged instruments, dissonant strings, and boleros like "Espérame en el cielo"* to pervert the mundane.

• Social subtext: The brilliant, dark social subtext: turning ageism, family disconnection, and the invisibility of the elderly into the vengeful engine of a terrestrial nightmare, making us complicit and guilty as a society.


• Acting: Old people who devour the screen, especially lead Zorion Eguileor, with a hypnotic and menacing presence. And, of course, the brutal old folks in every minor role, paying homage to legends like Lone Fleming, Manuel de Blas, and Josele Román.


• Use of space: The masterful use of the confined apartment space, showcasing outstanding direction (awarded for innovation at the FANT Bilbao), where the pictorial composition and split diopter lens tell the story long before the characters open their mouths.

The Bad

• Final escalation: The shift into the third act and its explosive finale may feel too abrupt and over-the-top for purists seeking a psychological thriller that stays restrained until the credits roll.
• Secondary characters: Despite the strong performances from the main cast, some supporting characters (like Jota, Naia’s boyfriend) feel a bit undercooked at the heart of the conflict and don’t quite add enough weight to the climax.
• Son’s passivity: The son (Mario)’s almost infuriating passivity in the face of increasingly violent warning signs within his own family. While the script justifies it brilliantly through grief denial and character disintegration, it intentionally tests the viewer’s patience to the point of frustration.

Claqueta Ácida’s Verdict

Rating: 7.5/10. Old is a bold, gritty, and utterly punchy piece of indie cinema that racked up 16 Goya Award nominations in its year. Raúl Cerezo and Fernando González Gómez take classic Spanish social realism—a family flat in Madrid—run it through the suffocating filter of a quasi-demonic heatwave, and hand us back a warped mirror reflecting our own monstrous indifference toward the elderly. The film knows how to simmer on the lowest heat before exploding in your face with a violence so unsettling, you can’t look away 💀.

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