10 Great Directors Who Keep Making Terrible Movies

The once-promising directors who can't stop propping up flop after flop...

The Green Inferno Eli Roth
High Top Releasing

Sometimes, a great director simply can’t be convinced that their latest idea is a non-starter.

Generally, this phenomenon is quickly blamed on an outsized ego, an attribute which it’s assumed many directors suffer from. However whilst this can be the case, often times directors are simply handed the wrong project by studio and think they can make a dud work despite the warning signs.

So some of the directors listed here were over-ambitious and let their vision get the better of their common sense, resulting in some woeful films from talented filmmakers. Some, however, simply said yes to the wrong project assuming anything with a big budget and a recognizable franchise behind it was bound to turn out alright.

But whatever the cause, all of the ten directors listed here have one thing in common: they all showed some serious promise early on, only to somehow produce a string of shoddy films in the years since their debuts.

With that in mind, here are ten filmmakers who proved they had a great movie in them... then followed it up by proving they had a ton of bad ideas to share too.

10. M Night Shyamalan

The Green Inferno Eli Roth
Gautam Singh/AP

Whilst he's often called one of the worst to ever pick up a camera, that's not fair to Unbreakable director M Night Shyamalan.

What is much more fair is calling him the most inconsistent filmmaker in Hollywood history.

The director wowed the world with The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, a trio of hits which left viewers thinking they were witnessing the rise of a new genre film making legend.

Then he left cinema aisles roaring with laughter with The Village.

But don't worry film fans, because he then (kind of) came back via the more modest and mature effort Lady in the Water.

Then he truly screwed up with The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth, a trio of total flops in a row, each worse than the last.

But M Night proved his cold streak was over and his critics were misguided with the one-two punch of The Visit and Split!

Then he made Glass. Honestly, at what point can audiences sue for damage caused by persistent whiplash?

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Cathal Gunning hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.