Tapped out long ago

He’s an example of a filmmaker who ran out of gas because he has no deep philosophical beliefs, the kind that sustain a great artist over a long career.

Look at someone like Scorsese, his relationship to Christianity informs nearly all of his work. Most of his films are about sinners who are seduced into a glamorous but spiritually hollow lifestyle and the hedonistic highs soon give way to misery or death.

David Lynch is a Transcendental Meditation nut who loves Hindu philosophy, this obsession informs his highly abstract films, which blur internal and external realities. He’s aways reaching for the deepest truth, showing the nightmares that emerge when people are discordant with themselves.

David Cronenberg is all about the purity of the human condition and his films show how that can be perverted by the world around us, mutating people into ‘the new flesh’ as we merge with technology etc.

Shyamalan made some great films and there was a thread of troubled souls being ‘healed’ early on, but I don’t think he has any deeper philosophical beliefs or questions, and so his ego fills the void, and now it looks like he’s jumped into the cult of wokism - which doesn’t allow questions. Perhaps he would be better off as a director if he doesn’t have enough substance to be a writer-director?

Who knows, maybe this new film will reveal hidden depths and be a return to form - but by the looks of the trailer, it will be another step backwards.