'The Old Ways' is a nightmare comedy about a world in which justice has been reduced to a grotesque spectacle. A young boy is to be hung for murder. For politically-motivated reasons, as elderly executioner has been chosen to preside over the ceremony despite the fact that he is woefully out of practice. As an audience of witnesses watches through a two-way mirror, the execution spirals out of the bumbling executioner's control, descending into a horrific farce.