When you say ’fear of the unknown’, that is the definition of fear fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it’s genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we’re not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.

Shyamalan frames fear not as a reaction to a specific object but as a response to uncertainty itself: what we cannot see, predict, or understand. By calling fear “genetic,” he links it to evolved survival mechanisms—wariness of unfamiliar environments (his example of the woods) that historically protected humans from hidden threats. The remark also functions as a statement of artistic method: much of suspense and horror depends on withholding information so the audience’s imagination fills the gap. In this view, knowledge and familiarity reduce fear, while ambiguity sustains it, making “the unknown” both a biological trigger and a storytelling tool.