Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream is continuing in the vein of his last few releases. Ever since Allen moved away from the neurotic New York comedy that characterized his cult-followed films, he has been distancing his public.

Reviews highlight several problems such as lack of humor, but it seems as though the critique is not of the films themselves, but of the elements within the long line of Allen films that have made him popular.

One of the more audience-accepted character themes about Allen’s older work was the portrayal of his own neuroses. Essentially playing himself, Allen worked through the same issues that other people could at least relate to. While it would be difficult to always center a film around this idea, his leap in the opposite direction seems to take away from what has drawn viewers to the director.

Indeed, respected critics have speculated that the overwhelming welcome the director received at the Venice Film Festival where Cassandra’s Dream premiered should be attributed not to the film itself, but to the relief that audiences felt at finally seeing Allen again. In writing himself into films less and less, the characters that the viewers see are no longer relatable, and are instead indistinguishable from other one-dimensional characters from typical Hollywood blockbusters.

It has been postulated that Allen’s problem may be that he is no longer in his element: as much as his neuroses, New York was a major player in early Allen works. New York was an element of its own, and, like Diane Keaton, an Allen film without it seemed to be lacking.

Allen has since moved on to a new muse (Scarlett Johansson) and a new city: London, which has featured in his last three films. However, while he has discussed his love for London in several press conferences, critically, it does not come through in Cassandra’s Dream such as it did for New York in Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1987) and Everyone Says I Love You (1996).

Allen’s decision to move away from comedy was perhaps the most detrimental of all. At the press release for the official premiere in Venice this past September, he explained that his favorite concept is no longer comedic neuroses, but death. While he explored death in some of his earlier work, such as Love and Death (1975), it was never in the gritty, dark way as now.

Directors evolve, and, judging from critical reviews, Allen’s new decisions are not the sole reason for the unpopularity of his latest films. Allen has been an important figure for many fans of independent cinema. In changing his M.O., he has abandoned some once-loyal followers.

His new films have merit in and of themselves: the cinematography in Cassandra’s Dream is gorgeous, the themes are explored in a fantastically fatalistic way, and the sequences are thick with tension. However, there is something decidedly un-Woody Allen-esque about his newest films, and his old fans don’t know quite what to do with it.