THERE is something of the night about M Night Shyamalan and his cinematic land of make-believe.

He stalks the supernatural, first playing mind games in The Sixth Sense and then going weirder still than Samuel L Jackson's hair in Unbreakable.

Nothing is as it first seems in his mutating movies as he straddles the gap between the normal and paranormal, searching for reason, for explanation, and this time in film number three, crop circles are his fixation. Or, rather, these baffling sculptures of perfect dimension and nocturnal creation provide a starting point for a study of faith and parenting skills, Fatherhood and fatherhood.

Mel Gibson is the blasted rock on which Shyamalan builds his shape-shifting exercise in night fright. Gibson is Graham Hess, a small-town Pennsylvania preacher who has turned from God to farming, from tending flocks to raising crops, after his wife's death in a road accident robbed him of all spiritual belief.

Dog collar cast-away, crucifix removed from the bedroom wall, he now brings up his two children (Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin) with his quietly intense brother, former baseball player Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix). The boy is asthmatic, his doll-like younger sister is obsessed with drinking only the freshest tap water, depositing glasses everywhere. Mere detail? Wait and see; everything has its place and purpose, Shyamalan goes on to suggest.

So, what can explain the crop circles that re-design Hess's horizon-cresting cornfield overnight, and what are the clicking noises and sudden wind rushes in this field of screams? Is it the work of local pranksters; maybe aliens; or something else again, something miraculous, or a sign of the Day of Judgement or merely A MidWestern Night's Dream from Shyamalan?

Hess and his family withdraw indoors, inside their dark, wooden, old-fashioned farmstead, watching the outside world turn apocalyptic on their TV set (a metaphor for our 9/11 times indeed).

Heard but not seen until late on, an invasive force attacks the house, but the early warmth of Shyamalan's writing and Hitchcock school of teasing, claustrophobic tension makes way for a too-close encounter with Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

Writer, director, producer and technical wizard he may be, skilled user of children he is too, but the spooky Shyamalan undoes all his disquieting good work with a sentimental, even prosaic finale that replaces the eerie with the dreary.

A disappointing sign-off, when he should stay weird and other worldly and keep everything of the Night about him.

Updated: 09:00 Friday, September 13, 2002