The main thing that makes old people scary to general society is declining health, dementia, and physical disabilities. Dementia can cause seemingly unpredictable moods and is frequently associated with seemingly undue anger (I say seemingly because it is “unpredictable” from an external perspective, but not from the person themselves).
The movie opens saying that historic cultures believed that this anger was caused by possession. While the movie is clearly trying to say that we need to treat old people better, they are also explicitly saying that symptoms of a group of disabilities is caused by demonic possession. If you want the way we treat old people to be the monster, then make it the monster—not its victims.
When the nurse shown in this scene is on the phone, she says, “I have to go. Old Mr. Reincke is waiting for me. The sad guy, remember? In the wheelchair.” This explicitly associates being sad and being disabled; these two identifying features are inherently connected in the author’s mind. Furthermore, this character’s ableist and ageist pity is used to humanise her when, really, she sees disabled and old people as less than. When she goes in the building, the camera pans to the empty wheelchair insinuating that something is deeply wrong because wheelchair users obviously can’t walk or even transfer.
Throughout the movie, it zooms on and exacerbates wrinkles, aging spots, gauntness, and thin, greying hair. The old people in the movie also rarely speak, and this is done in order to up the tension. Again, it’s clear what the writer was trying to say, but it is the exact opposite of everything they actually did. They made their victims the amoral monsters, and our main family did nothing to deserve being attacked by them. The movie is extremely contradictory and bigoted. The first nurse is written to be kind and empathetic, but she is actually ableist and ageist. Nurses, care givers, and financiers are made to be the bad guys, but the main nurse calls out the systemic and familial issues in elder care. The mom upholds a boundary with her father, but the movie makes her the bad guy for doing so. Old people are made to be the victims, but the traits of disabilities and old age are used to increase tension and scare viewers. Old people are the supposed victims, but they become possessed and murder children.
If you want old people to be the victims, then don’t use traits of disabilities and old age to scare people. That’s not how empathy works.
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