ny careful viewing of M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography indicates that the writer-director, now reigning king of his own small fiefdom in what remains of the American movie business, thinks a lot about storytelling. During the period in which he became a pariah—a figure of fun for critics, audiences, and parodists like the creators of —one of his most-mocked films was (2006), in which the residents of an apartment building band together to safeguard a nymph named Story. These characters learn that they all have prescribed roles to play in a classical myth, roles like the Guardian, the Symbolist, the Healer, and the Guild, all of which sound more like concepts from a screenwriting manual than any recognizable
