In his hand, glass, mirrors and any reflecting surface becomes a tool of dramatic proportions. Constrained spaces are used wisely to send viewers into a panicky mental scurry. The sheer coldness of the air his characters breathe can make your head spin. Even after spending three decades behind the camera, M. Night Shyamalan hasn’t allowed the money-heavy Los Angeles air to get to him. Instead, the Pondicherry-born director continues to live in a converted farmhouse near Philadelphia, lending a unique touch to the psychological and supernatural genre of films that do brisk business at the box office.

At the same time, his career has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, with a series of hits giving way to a period of box-office lull, only to find the wheel turn and life is back in top gear, especially with the 2021 release Old and his continuing success with Servant, the show on Apple TV+, which has just begun airing the third season.

As expected, the new season continues to be a slow-burn watch revolving around a grieving couple (Dorothy and Sean, played by Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell respectively), who hire a young nanny (Nell Tiger Free plays Leanne) to take care of the doll that has replaced their dead child but the doll turns into a baby. But Julian (played by Rupert Grint), Dorothy’s young brother, is suspicious. Playing out mostly within the four walls of a house, every knock, every thud, every footstep spooks Leanne as much as the viewers.

Happy to take on the role of showrunner and executive producer (occasionally directing an episode), Shyamalan has a good slate of directors — including his daughter Ishana — to bring his vision alive.

The 51-year-old director chatted with The Telegraph on his scripwriting ritual, his love for contained spaces, what art means to him and more. Excerpts.

What goes through the mind of M. Night Shyamalan when he is working on ideas?

Over the pandemic, I spent some time by myself, and it was a beautiful moment to just stop and jot down ideas; it’s very organic. What I do for my movies… I have a notebook. If I like an idea, I buy a notebook; it’s a big ritual for me. And then I just start throwing ideas at it. When there is a certain amount of ideas — there is no specific number — I am ready to make a movie.

And in this case, over the pandemic, I kind of had this board in my house and I just wrote down things. Like, how would it be if Leanne is left alone and the others go on vacation. I just came up with these ideas and then arcs of character movements. When the board was completely full and I ran out of ideas, I wondered how many episodes that would be. There is a combination of the creative part and a physical aspect of how much time I am spending on the show. It looks very tight to me. Four seasons (the show has been renewed for the fourth and final season) felt doable.

Lauren Ambrose, Rupert Grint, Nell Tiger Free and Toby Kebbell in Servant. Picture: Apple

Our relationship with space changed during the pandemic as we were unable to leave home. Did that trigger ideas?

I have always been drawn to contained movies, contained storytelling and characters that are in one location and something gigantic is happening around us. Everyone around the world is having this experience to some extent or the other… and dealing with paranoia and feeling trapped. You feel very similar to these characters, who (generally) don’t leave the house. A lot of people are asking whether I wrote certain things because of the pandemic. No, these are kind of my instincts about what it feels to be claustrophobic in kind of a scary situation.

All of us have had to confront death in a way unlike ever before. There is the idea of death and acceptance on your show. Have the events changed the arc of the 40 episodes (in total)?

The last 24 episodes were conceived in the middle of the pandemic. Does this all have meaning? It may have pushed the story a little bit in that direction. An existential question is there. Is the universe a benevolent place, something good out there? I wonder if our relationship to spirituality or religion is being questioned here.

Are some of your fears and anxiety getting expressed through the characters?

Most stories I am interested in feature the fragility of family and the fear that something is going to happen to your family members, whether it’s Signs or Old or Servants… they are all stories about the fragility of the family. When you speak about these things to the characters, I think each is slightly different in their relationship to the supernatural. What is their belief system? I enjoy making them distinct and create this arc — at first they don’t believe and then they believe. How much do we believe in the things we can’t see? Do we still believe in wondrous things?

Ishana Night Shyamalan has directed a few episodes of Servant

Do you still think of the audience in the same way when you make a TV show?

Even if I am making something for long-form television, I still think of the audience out there and what they are feeling and the experience of being together, even though they are in a streaming situation. Original movies teach the audience a language the second it starts — this is the tone of the humour, this is the tone of the movement of the camera and you have to be super consistent with that. If you manage that then the audience will immediately learn to interpret what they are seeing. We can feel this unconsciously. When you went to see Unbreakable, it was an experience that was resonating because it was a very consistent language, a new language… you mastered it. My hope with Servant is that the same value system gets applied here.

Traditionally, when it was networks it was very transactional; put as much sugar content as you can before a commercial break as advertisers wanted that. Now that you have changed to a subscription model, resonance is the most important thing. It leans towards a kind of storytelling I love. Signs opened after Unbreakable and it was the resonance from Unbreakable that made my next movie successful. I believe in the resonance of things. I hope it applies to Servant as well.

Q Are you always looking for new voices?

It has been a wonderful experience, watching movies and going, ‘Who are those film-makers?’ Then comes the moment of calling them and requesting them to come to Philadelphia and direct an episode for me. I have been taking people who are visionaries and they have to just deal with me. I wanted them to retain their style. We had an incredible time filming the seasons.

How is your daughter’s filming style different from yours?

If you come to our house, it’s Ted Talks each time you are in the kitchen. We are talking about dedication and what art means. What we do when we are being disruptive. How can this singer not write a song anymore? I will burn the house down for something I believe in. Throw it all out if required. I can mortgage my house to make a movie I believe in. If we do art to be accepted, or to become famous, then please don’t do it; do something else. I don’t want another artist doing something for all the wrong reasons.

Ishana knows all this. She has been to film school and she has been by my side… she has nailed it (the episodes she has directed). Apple was stunned. She has done four episodes so far and is going to do another in season four. She is different than me. She has a little bit of Guillermo del Toro; she likes magic realism.

If a gun was held to your head, would you have been able to make 100 seasons of Servant while maintaining the same level of suspense?

I don’t know about 100 but with a gun to my head, maybe I could have made 10. I love that notion of nothing happening. The biggest thing to ever happen in any story happened before the story began. That’s what the structure is. You can’t recover from the thing that had happened, which is the beginning of the story. And the story is a resonance of the worst thing that could have happened to you as a human being and how you can continue. Is there a God? What’s the meaning of life? All of those things are the answers, however many episodes that would take.

Spooky vs Scary

The Sixth Sense (1999)

It’s the movie that put M. Night Shyamalan on the map and gave storytelling a new direction where instead of using horror to shock, there is an insight into mental health, isolation and companionship. Here, the chilling atmosphere becomes a character that matches the stature of those played by Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment. A chill down the spine is promised as you watch all the kitchen cabinets and drawers open at once.

Signs (2002)

Supernatural elements meet real-world drama. This slow-burn film instead of scaring viewers, spooks them. Father Graham Hess, a lapsed priest turned farmer, played by Mel Gibson, discovers elaborate crop circles in his field, like those appearing all over the world. Hoaxers at work or have aliens arrived?

Unbreakable (2000)

A love letter to comic book heroes while touching on issues familiar to his oeuvre — death and familial strain. Here, heroes and villains are as human as anyone else while comic books are the starting point to an investigation of what constitutes heroism. Bruce Willis as David Dunn and Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price do justice to a strong script.

Split (2016)

Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) needs a ride home after a party when a seemingly helpful dad arrives. Her two friends (Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula) take the back seat, busy with their phones. Suddenly they realise that the man who slips into the driver’s seat is actually someone else, someone with dissociative identity disorder. Soon, the three teenagers wake up in a locked room.

The Visit (2015)

A fairy-tale offering for the present generation has a young brother and sister travel into the deep, dark woods, but instead of holding hands, they cling on to camcorders to record an adventure. It’s horror that works on multiple levels and, more importantly, it’s an entertaining tale whose success depends on who you are asking about the film.

Old (2021)

The director turns a family’s tropical vacation into a horror film that unfolds on a beach where everything is glorious at the start but then they realise they can’t leave. Weird things start happening — wounds heal at an extraordinary rate, crow’s feet appear on faces. Are we going to spend our lives dealing with frivolities while the clock ticks away?