The Twist Came First, M. Night Shyamalan Surprises Beyond Fest With Remain
On the night billed for The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan gave the Egyptian Theatre the world premiere of his Jake Gyllenhaal romance.
The ticket said The Sixth Sense. On Tuesday night at the Egyptian Theatre, M. Night Shyamalan had something else in the can. He turned the Beyond Fest evening for his 1998 classic into the world premiere of his new thriller, Remain, Variety reported, months before it reaches theaters in February.
Remain is a supernatural romance co-written with Nicholas Sparks. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Tate Gordon, a New York architect who heads to Cape Cod to design a summer home for his best friend, and Phoebe Dynevor plays Wren, described in the synopsis as “a young woman who disrupts his carefully ordered world.” Afterward he posted a short note. “I surprised 1,400 people with my new film, it was something I’ll never forget,” he wrote, as Total Film reported.
The room’s verdict landed on social media within hours. The critic Griffin Schiller called it Shyamalan at “his most earnest and sincere,” while the actor and filmmaker Luke Barnett wrote that “nobody does ‘fun, movie theater horror’ like M. Night.”
The screening capped three straight nights of Shyamalan at the Egyptian. Beyond Fest built a 12-film retrospective called Night Visions around him, the first West Coast survey of his work, and he joined four of its programs in person, Dread Central reported. Sunday brought the Eastrail 177 trilogy of Unbreakable, Split and Glass, followed that night by Signs and Knock at the Cabin. Monday paired The Visit with Trap. The festival also scheduled The Village, Old and Lady in the Water at the Los Feliz 3.
“To welcome Night and celebrate the extraordinary body of work he has built with this program is a profound honor,” said Evrim Ersoy, the festival’s head of programming. Bryce Dallas Howard joined him for the Signs double bill, BroadwayWorld reported.
Beyond Fest, run with American Cinematheque, continues through October 6. Earlier in the festival, Bob Odenkirk introduced Rumble in the Bronx at the Egyptian.
