Green takes us to that place where we keep feelings that we treasure, but are a little afraid of.

Despite a few narrative confusions, I found it pure magic.

For anyone who likes classic, offbeat American moviemaking, in the rural-thriller genre from "Moonrise" to "Macon County Jail," Undertow is one to check. Seething with violence, bleeding with lyricism, it's a poem from the junk heap, a cry from the swamp.

The movie builds slowly to its grinding climax, and the suspense -- the standard by which a thriller must primarily be judged -- is first-rate.

Undertow has the plain, stark, disturbing quality that marked the original "Cape Fear" and "In Cold Blood."

Although there is violence and danger, this is less about the chase than it is about the relationship between the siblings.

It's a dreamy Southern gothic, a la "Night of the Hunter," with an emphasis on the dreamy.

Taking great artistic chances in storytelling and performance style, Green finally fulfills the promise he showed in his fine 2000 drama "George Washington" as a terrific builder of mood, atmosphere, and psychological suspense.

In equal parts powerful and peculiar, the film is not my favorite of Green's, but it helps solidify his position as one of the most visionary young directors around.

Conforms to many of the tropes of a formula thriller but, aided by an evocative Philip Glass score and Tim Orr's beautifully naturalistic cinematography, it transcends the genre.

As with the 70's films of Terrence Malick, one of Undertow's producers, the more intoxicated it becomes with rural desolation and fecundity, the more deeply in touch it puts you with its characters' souls.

The result is a movie that doesn't add up to the sum of its parts, yet some of those parts connect deeply anyway.

Undertow may prove the least immediately satisfying of Green's films, but it remains an achievement, emotionally rich and rife with biblical and mythic undertones.

However cloying, the movie creates a powerful vortex. It's surprisingly visceral-at times almost thrilling.