*This post is not a movie review*

*Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any copyrighted material used in this work. All credit goes to the original creators and copyright holders. This use is non-commercial and intended for commentary/educational purposes only.

Every night, I sit on my sofa in front of my TV (like most people do) looking for something to watch on Netflix or Prime. I usually watch old episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation but tonight, I decided to watch something different. Something that does not involve finding out who committed the crime or whether it was an accident or not. I wanted something with a different plot.

It did not take me a while to find a film. I stumbled across this horror film on Netflix called Old People (2022). This movie is about a mass of old people in a small German village who suddenly went on a killing rampage. It was like a zombie apocalypse film but with the geriatric population. I am not going to go into much detail as this post is not a review (although the plot and the actors’ were brilliant) and I do not want to spoil it in case you want to see it.

The aging population is getting bigger every year. This means increase in healthcare demands, changes in family dynamics and increases in pension costs and shortages in the health and social care sector. With these implications, the elderly population ends up being neglected, abused and abandoned. In one scene, you’ll see that the residents in the care home all look scruffy, hungry and dirty. Some were tied to their beds to keep them from walking and injuring themselves. The state of the care home looks abandoned and decrepit, much like the state of its inhabitants. These people were treated like outsiders by the younger population looking in to their world. Then one night, while the younger ones were partying, they suddenly went berserk and started killing and hacking. It started in the residential home where they killed 2 carers and then attacking the others in the village.

As the film goes, I realised some things. First, I noticed that as we age, we get too preoccupied with our own lives that we forget that they too exist. We stop visiting our parents or grandparents because we are too busy for them. If they want to spend time with us, most would make an excuse not to see them. It was like, after all that they have done for us (i.e. raising us, looking after us, etc.), instead of reciprocating and showing gratitude , we discard them like rubbish.

For everyone’s convenience we assign other people to look after them and have them institutionalised. I used to work in a care home and I have seen how these residents were treated by their families. At first, the visits from their relatives are frequent, then dwindle as time goes by. Some only speak to them on the phone. Some only visit when death is imminent. Staff in these places (not everyone of course) treat them like objects, not even bothering to know their names and find out who they are. Heard some former colleagues refer to a resident by their room number instead of their names. It’s like they are not humans but livestock.

Watching the film made me realise that we have never really given much thought about what the old people think and feel when they are neglected, abandoned and abused because we are too engrossed with our own lives. Maybe they feel resentment towards how they are treated. Feel used even. Angry? Probably. I’d be angry too if my relatives throw me in a care home and forget about me and let a stranger look after me.

The film has reminded me the importance of being with your family and honouring and respecting the elderly. I myself have been too absorbed with my personal and professional life that I seldom communicate to them or see them. From the beginning they were there for me. It’s my turn now to be there for them. I try my best to visit them every year. Everyday, we communicate through group chat on Messenger or video call. Our conversations often revolve around mundane things but it did not matter. We are keeping in touch with each other.

In another scene in the film, the narrator, asked her grandfather if there was a time when the younger people could have done something to ward off the resentment that they feel towards them. The grandfather just replied that he could not remember that far back. To answer the narrator’s question, yes. The younger people can do something to keep elderly from having resentments towards them. We can do this by treating them with respect, spend time with them. Getting to know them makes them feel seen. The old are still human beings, they still deserve to be treated as such.

Remember the golden rule. I am alvery sure that you would not want to be maltreated. We will not stay young forever. We will be like them eventually. We must never forget our elderly.