This week’s trailer comes from a filmmaker who’s never met a genre he couldn’t quietly upend: M. Night Shyamalan just dropped the first trailer for Remain, and it plays exactly the kind of trick you’d expect from the director of The Sixth Sense and Trap.
The trailer opens looking like a straightforward romantic drama — a montage of happy moments between Wren (Phoebe Dynevor) and Tate (Jake Gyllenhaal), the kind of glowing, golden-hour love story you’d expect from a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. Then the tone flips. Wren starts crying, asking Tate, “Why can’t we be together?” He answers, “I think you know,” and moments later she appears to be preparing to hurt herself against a bathroom wall before vanishing entirely. It’s a genuinely unsettling turn, and it happens fast.
What’s actually going on here
Remain follows Tate, an architect recently released from a psychiatric facility after losing his sister; who, like others in his family, could apparently see spirits. He relocates to a small coastal town on Cape Cod for work and falls for Wren, a woman carrying a lot more underneath the surface than she initially lets on. As their relationship deepens, Tate realizes he’ll need to uncover the truth about Wren’s past to save her from what’s coming.
The project has an interesting origin: Shyamalan developed the story alongside Nicholas Sparks, who separately turned it into a novel (out October 7) while Shyamalan wrote and directed the film version himself. It’s a rare pairing — the guy behind decades of twisty supernatural thrillers joining forces with the guy behind The Notebook — and based on this trailer, the combination is exactly as strange and effective as you’d hope.
The cast rounds out with Ashley Walters, Julie Hagerty and Jay O. Sanders, and Shyamalan’s longtime composer James Newton Howard is back scoring the film. Shyamalan has been vocal about this one too, reportedly calling it the highest-testing film of his entire career; which, for a director with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable on his résumé, is saying something.
When to actually see it
Here’s the one wrinkle: Remain was originally dated for Halloween weekend this year, but Warner Bros. has since moved it to February 5, 2027, positioning it as a Valentine’s-season release instead of an October one. Given the trailer’s rom-com-to-horror structure, that timing actually tracks.
Watch the trailer below, and get ready to have your expectations flipped right along with Tate’s.
The post Trailer Tuesday: M. Night Shyamalan’s Remain Starts as a Love Story, Then Goes Somewhere Much Darker appeared first on Press Pass LA.
