By Caroline Westbrook

Joaquin Phoenix's character sets the mystery in motion

Director M Night Shyamalan, best known for the scary thrillers The Sixth Sense and Signs, has gathered an all-star cast for his latest film The Village, which opens in the US on 30 July.

In The Village, Shyamalan takes his fascination with all things supernatural back to the 19th Century.

Ever since he managed to shock audiences all around the world with The Sixth Sense's infamous "twist ending", Shyamalan has gained a reputation for keeping audiences guessing, delivering similarly unpredictable outcomes in both 1999's Unbreakable and the 2002 thriller Signs.

The problem is that those who have seen more than one of his films have come to expect the unpredictable - leaving him with the tricky task of coming up with ever more outlandish plots in an effort to have viewers on the edge of their seats.

Such is the case with The Village. For here, Shyamalan has outdone himself in his efforts to bamboozle the audience with twists and turns - and the result is more silly than spooky.

The village in question is a small community in 19th-Century Pennsylvania, run by a troupe of "elders"' that includes Edward Walker (William Hurt) and Alice Hunt (Sigourney Weaver).

The weird goings-on in the woods create the suspense

The surrounding woods are home to a race of mysterious creatures with whom the townspeople have a truce - neither strays into each other's territory, and that's the way it's been for years.

But when Alice's son Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix) breaks the agreement and wanders into the woods, it sets in motion a chain of events which place the village, and its inhabitants, in danger.

Visually, this is Shyamalan's best effort yet, thanks to its stark imagery and stunning cinematography - while newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of Ron) steals the acting honours from the more experienced Hurt and Weaver with her assured turn as the film's blind heroine.

But the script is downright clunky in parts, throwing up its fair share of unintentionally funny one-liners - and the pace is so slow that at times it is more tedious than tense.

What is more, the second half - without giving too much away - becomes so over-the-top that it makes a mockery of everything that's gone before it.

By the time the focus shifts to the woods themselves and the film's big mystery is revealed, it has begun to feel more like an episode of Scooby-Doo in period costume than the latest offering from a man renowned for his thrillers.