The leadup to the release this week of M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water seemed to make the writer-director the story, rather than his movie. This wasn’t just the group spin of the Media Circus. Shyamalan cooperated with and encouraged this emphasis.

By the ten-or-twelve minute mark in Emmanuel Carrerè’s film you may feel you’re experiencing another riff borrowed from the old Twilight Zone formula. In fact, for more than half of its less-than-hour-and-a-half length, it could pass for a sleek but serious-minded French rendering of one of those bizarro-world fantasy outings.

For a sequel to one of the keystone “indie” films of the 1990s, Clerks II arrives in theaters this weekend with a surprising lack of promotion from the stodgy old Hollywood studio that is distributing it. Maybe they assume that no promotion is needed, that fans of Clerks will line right up for it without prompting.