Raúl Cerezo, and Fernando González Gómez’s horror thriller may not be the most entertaining genre film, but it certainly is one of the most depressing movies about aging I’ve ever seen. With movies like “The Elderly,” although there is almost certainly another horror element waiting around the corner, the pair of directors are keen on depicting aging and being elderly as perhaps the most horrific circumstance to ever find ones self in. “The Elderly” is a lot about this inexplicable series of events involving the local elderly population, many of whom are becoming violent toward their family and toward themselves.
This violence usually involves unusual self inflicted mutilation involving machinery. Along the way a small family begins to notice that their father Manuel is slowly deteriorating mentally. Couped up in a small apartment during the summer, tensions begin to rise; As Manuel grows more and more resistant toward his family, “The Family” certainly reveals its true nature within the cracks of the narrative. As much focus as the pair of directors place on the elderly going violent, there’s also the heavy focus on the monotony of being elderly.
As well there is the sheer abuse they tend to take from people that would normally identify themselves as “loved ones.” One sequence in particular finds Manuel being scrubbed in a shower by his daughter in law who is insistent on locking him up. The pair of directors are very good in showing the inherent claustrophobia of this setting, pitching every scene in dimness that helps to also punctuate the suffocating heat. Behind the scenes, the phenomenon of what’s unfolding unravels and eventually we’re subject to an explosion that may or may not have been worth the journey.
It was and it wasn’t. It’s not because the directors leave it all up to our own interpretation, but the ending is just left dangling there. There’s not a lot of resolution, or exploration open to us. And there’s also not a lot of evidence supplied to where we can come to our own conclusions. ”The Elderly” might not be the bit of creeping horror in the ilk of “The Babadook” that it thinks it is, but it does thrive on the universal fear of growing old in an uncaring world.