M. Night Shyamalan's New Movie Sets Up An Even Bigger Plot Twist Than The Sixth Sense

Published Sep 9, 2026, 5:20 PM EDT

Shawn S. Lealos is an entertainment writer who is a voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has written for Screen Rant,  CBR, ComicBook, The Direct, The Sportster, Chud, 411mania, Renegade Cinema, Yahoo Movies, and many more.
 

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Shyamalan is a movie director who specializes in twisting, haunting thrillers, while Sparks is an author who mostly writes dramas that often have extremely sad endings that offer a small glimmer of hope for the survivors. While the two men have different styles of storytelling, they both deal a lot with trauma and grief in their tales, and that makes Remain seem even more interesting. The two came up with the characters and story together and then wrote their own versions.

Sparks' novel came out in October 2025, so people can read that book and get an idea of what the new Shyamalan movie is about. However, it's important to understand that the two men worked on their stories together, and while Sparks read Shyamalan's script before writing his book, there are likely key differences. As a result, it is interesting to see what kind of twists Shyamalan might throw into this supernatural love story.

M. Night Shyamalan's Remain Looks Like It Starts Where The Sixth Sense Ends

The biggest twist of Shyamalan's career came in his breakout movie, The Sixth Sense. The film sees Bruce Willis play a child psychologist named Malcolm Crowe, who suffers trauma when a former patient breaks into his house, tells Crowe he failed him, and shoots Crowe and then himself. The movie picks up years later when Crowe is working again and has a new patient who claims he can see dead people.

The movie then shows Crowe struggling to connect with his wife and not understanding how to make things right, all while helping the young boy with his situation. The twist is that Crowe died when the former patient shot him, and when he discovers that the boy can see dead people, he realizes he is one of them, which turns the entire movie on its head. It also makes Crowe's relationship with his wife so much more traumatic.

Remain lays its cards on the table in the trailer. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Tate Gordon, a man who moves to Cape Cod to design a home for his friend. He previously underwent treatment for acute depression, and while mourning his sister's death, he meets a young woman named Wren, and the two fall in love. The trailer then shows that Wren doesn't really exist, and she might be a ghost herself.

It almost seems like a continuation of the themes from The Sixth Sense. While Malcolm is trying to reach his wife and connect with her, not realizing he is a ghost, Tate is the one in Remain who seems to be trying to connect with someone he loves. Both movies seem to be an exploration of trauma and loss, and Remain might be a perfect follow-up to Shyamalan's breakout movie.

What Could The Real Twist Be In Remain?

No one will go into an M. Night Shyamalan movie without trying to figure out what the twist is going to be. Even in the movies without an obvious twist, there are some twists and turns to his stories that stand out more than those of other filmmakers, thanks to his past. Remain clearly has a twist set up in the premise, and it is likely to be either what happened to Tate's sister or something Tate himself did that he hasn't come to grips with.

Phoebe Dynevor plays Wren, and the trailer makes it appear that she is a supernatural ghost and not just part of Tate's fractured psyche. However, with Shyamalan, anything is possible, and with Sparks, it is likely to be a dramatic loss of love from Tate's past.

The clues might come in Sparks' book, which is different from the movie but follows similar themes. In the book, Tate's sister admits before she died that she could see ghosts, just like the young boy from The Sixth Sense. Tate might possess the same abilities, and this leads him to seek out the cause of Wren's death.

That means this could be more like Stir of Echoes, a horror movie released the same year as The Sixth Sense. In that movie, Kevin Bacon stars as a man who is hypnotized at a party and then develops the ability to see ghosts, and he has to solve the murder of a mysterious young ghost girl from his neighborhood. Regardless of the twist, the Remain trailer remains intriguing, and the movie will hit theaters on February 5, 2027.