M. Night Shyamalan might be many things - a nerdy supernaturalist, a cocky sham, the most idiosyncratic mainstream director in the world - but a movie critic's friend is definitely not one of them. And because I am your friend, I won't tell you what's actually going on with "The Village," even though I'd really like to, if for no other reason than a simple need to get this spellbinding if ponderous film off my chest.

A sociology project disguised as a sylvan horror flick, the movie is loaded with the sorts of secrets and surprises Shyamalan likes to use in order to keep us all from talking about what he's really up to. In this case, seeing is not necessarily believing. With "The Village," he's toned down the sleepless bogey nights of "The Sixth Sense" and the evangelism of "Signs." Instead, he'd like to pitch us an allegory. Of course, before we know what any of that's about, the film comes off as a Grimm brothers fairy tale taken to the Outer Limits.

Set in a Pennsylvania community named Covington in 1897, "The Village" opens with the funeral of a small child and a large meal for all its inhabitants; right away we're meant to think about the Pilgrims or the Amish. Covington has no elected officials and no currency and sits next to a vast foreboding forest.

From time to time a big, twisting groan will escape from the trees, giving the gentle people of this community a reason to look nervously up from their plates. It turns out there are creatures that reside in the woods and who are referred to, in a typical phrase, as "those we don't speak of." There's a border that neither the Covingtonians nor the creatures are supposed to cross.

Lately, however, the young people in the town have been slipping into the woods. The chief culprit is Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix), a taciturn young man who comes to the town elders - played by a formidable group that includes William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Brendan Gleason, Cherry Jones, and Celia Weston - with a request to go through the forest to reach "the towns" for medicines.

The adults know this will incite the creatures to kill, and that the towns are bad places where men kill people, too. But death will keep visiting Covington if no one fetches a vaccine, and the creatures already seem vexed. There've been a number of animals left dead and peltless around town, and one night ominous slashes in red, known as "the bad color," are left on everyone's front doors.

This all sounds sinister enough, but before we can really start wondering how little sense it makes, Shyamalan begins his crafty bait and switch, starting with a string of crushes. Kitty Walker (Judy Greer) is in love with Lucius, who silently loves Kitty's blind sister Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), who's best friends with the smitten village idiot, played with show-stopping derangement by Adrien Brody. Shyamalan could have gotten away with a plain romantic drama but, admirably, he uses this love rhombus first as a detour from the creature business, then as a springboard for such Shyamalan exclusives as the Major Test of Character coupled with the Mind-blowing Plot Twist.

"The Village" has a lot of wondrous spectacle - cinematographer Roger Deakins has outdone himself here, giving the film's "Twilight Zone" scenarios the oil-painted light and heat of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. And while some of the acting is odd, it's all terrific. Phoenix is that rare actor who can turn chronic speechlessness into a form of comic piety, and Howard, daughter of Ron, is astonishing. Shyamalan clearly sees her as another of his holy-symbolic savants, but Howard, who seems pure without coming off virginal, complies only in the grueling latter going.

This is a monster movie whose monsters might differ from the ones you've come to see. Shyamalan's interest in them is simply as a type of lore - it's fascinatingly juvenile. In a sense, he's like Michael Jackson. He'll put you through all kinds of cynical, luridly disillusioned behavior just to maintain his belief in innocence.

Every minute of "The Village" is the work of a genius and a fool, as each of Shyamalan's last four movies has been. And this, by the filmmaker's standards, is the bravest, craziest one yet, questioning the meaning of magic and the trauma of loss. It springs from a type of defiant immaturity that seems possible only with him - or Jackson: a Neverland sprung from hurt and paranoia. Both men's art is so otherworldly, grandiose, and disfigured with naivete that you're forever asking whether you share the same planet with them.