When a pallid, otherworldly, watery being called Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) emerges from a swimming pool behind a dingy Philadelphia apartment building and into the arms of its bewildered superintendent, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), he discovers she needs protection. But from what? Slowly he learns from his withdrawn houseguest -- in "Lady in the Water" -- that she's a "narf," a nymph who has come on land to find a man of deep significance. But she dare not leave Cleveland's apartment because of marauding creatures in the wooded area just beyond the run-down high-rise.

Cleveland seeks help from his Korean neighbor Young-Soon Choi (Cindy Cheung) and her mother, Mrs. Choi (June Kyoko Lu), a cantankerous old lady who knows -- from stories she heard as a child -- all about narfs, "scrunts" and terrifying monkey-like beings known as tartutics that lurk in trees. Cleveland, a guy who has resigned himself to a life plunging toilets, soon understands that he's at the beginning of something significant. A mission. He accepts the challenge.

Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has never shied away from high-wire risk, and the very unevenness of his work, from the sublime "The Sixth Sense" to the disastrous "The Village," is testament to that courageous sensibility. If the ultimate goal is entertainment, then "Lady in the Water" enthusiastically rises to the task.

In a movie laden with enough symbolism, shamanism and mythic lore to make Joseph Campbell dance a tribal jig, Shyamalan never forgets to have fun. At the center of all this is Giamatti, whose performance demands short-list consideration come award time. He seems to grow with every role, and, here, you particularly notice the very expressiveness of his eyes, variously furtive, shy, mysterious, observant, even brooding -- and always haunted.

-- Desson Thomson (July 21, 2006)

Contains some frightening sequences.