Sort of an elaborated segment of "The Unexplained" on TV's Unsolved Mysteries, minus Robert Stack and his trenchcoat. Purportedly based on a factual case circa 1967 (here updated), it details some strange doings in anticipation of a major calamity in the small town of Point Pleasant, W. Va. No more should be revealed of those doings other than to say they point to a grand design, however far beyond our comprehension, in the seemingly random tragedies that visit humanity. The design, to the degree that it can be glimpsed, gives a design to the movie as well, and gives to it a corresponding degree of elegance. The degree of factuality, meantime, scarcely matters except insofar as it encourages the filmmakers to keep a lid on, and to let the tension build, till the big finish. The belief of director Mark Pellington in the paranormal rises nowhere near to the level of seriousness of, say, a Carl Dreyer. But his belief -- his conviction -- rises at least to that of a Terence Fisher or Freddie Francis in their Hammer Horror heyday. Quite sufficient, that is, for a work of imagination. (Of course the drawback to the factuality, or pretense thereof, is that the filmmakers' imagination cannot quite connect all the dots.) The acting tends to be a bit heavy, and the huge closeups make it seem even heavier: make it seem to belong more in a genre piece than in a journalistic or a propaganda one. But that's not altogether a bad thing. The cast of characters features a quorum of requisite figures: a rationalist reporter for the Washington Post (Richard Gere), a ploddingly ordinary and overmatched cop (Laura Linney), a God-fearing unimpeachable witness (Will Patton), a winged anthropomorphous creature that fits no known prototype, and an in-the-know occultist (Alan Bates) who can give a name to the thing: Mothman, as translated from the tongue of the Ukraine. When asked the common question of why, if this creature knows so much more than us mere mortals, it doesn't simply come out and share its secrets, the occultist has a good answer: "You're more advanced than a cockroach. Have you ever tried explaining yourself to one of them?" (2002) — Duncan Shepherd