Again: what is happening to the great American directors?

Rating: 1/10 (24 March 2013)

Normally I wouldn't bother commenting such an awful movie or even watching it to the end. But this after all was the great Tarantino, who directed some of the most brilliant movies in the last 20 years or so and invented a style of his own, so I soldiered on and hoped to be surprised. In the end, I felt more than disappointed, I felt embarrassed for him. This is not the meta-trash he specializes in, this is just pure unadultered trash: no intelligence, no originality, no irony, no second layer of meaning, no redeeming grace. It is badly written, badly directed, badly shot, badly cut. The actors - with the notable exception of Cristoph Walz - are laughable. This is the gory mush a dumb semi-illiterate teenager would produce if you gave him a few million dollars and told him: go write and direct a movie.
So I must repeat the question that has been daunting me since Poseidon by Riddley Scott and Black Horse by Spielberg: what is happening to the great Hollywood directors? Has a zombie plague stricken them all?