M. Night Shyamalan has always marched to the beat of his own drum, as the delightfully demented Trap reminded us all in 2024. The director that pundits once heralded as “The Next Spielberg” is a different kind of artist entirely, one whose moves are far harder to predict. At this point, though, that’s part of the fun of getting a new Shyamalan movie. One day we’re on the beach that makes you old; the next we’re in a haunted house with Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor. Never a dull moment!
It’s the latter that shapes the premise for Shyamalan’s next effort, Remain. An “otherworldly collaboration” between the director and romance author Nicholas Sparks, the film is a concerted departure from the dark-and-stormy pics Shyamalan spent the past few years working on. Ironically, Remain was Shyamalan’s original concept — Sparks penned a novel based on his script, which hit shelves earlier this year. It’s a surprising pivot for the author, whose novels were near-constant material for film adaptations in the 2000s and 2010s. (The last gasp of the Sparks book-to-movie pipeline came with 2016’s The Choice, which makes this collab all the more unorthodox.)
