M. NIGHT BE GIANT HE

Quick: Name five great filmmakers.

You could say Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick and Federico Fellini.

If you’re younger than 30, you might suggest Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, Spike Jonze, Darren Aronofsky and David Fincher.

I nominate the filmmaker whose latest feature, “The Village,” opens today.

His name: M. Night Shyamalan.

You know him, right? “The Sixth Sense”? “Unbreakable”? “Signs”?

Sure, he’s directed only six movies. He works in a low-rent genre (horror/suspense).

Worst of all, he appeals to the masses.

And being a popular success never helps your artistic reputation. Just ask Steven Spielberg.

Yet I can come up with at least seven reasons why Shyamalan should be considered not just a good, but a great, filmmaker.

(Note: There may be a spoiler or two in what follows.)

1. Shyamalan has a cool name.

Born in India, the 33-year-old Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan was only a few months old when his parents – a pair of doctors back home on vacation – moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia.

It was while studying film at New York University that he changed his middle name to “Night,” which is what his friends call him.

During his final year at NYU, Shyamalan wrote – he’s written all his films – what would become his first feature, “Praying With Anger” (1992). But his first try at a Hollywood film, “Wide Awake” (1998), put almost everyone who saw it in a coma.

At that point, there was only one way for his career to go.

2. Shyamalan makes Bruce Willis look like an actual actor.

While writing the screenplay for “Stuart Little” (that’s no misprint), Shyamalan worked on an idea for his third film: a story about a little boy who sees dead people.

Telling an eerie story that has a therapist (Bruce Willis) counseling a troubled boy named Cole (Haley Joel Osment), “The Sixth Sense” (1999) shaped Shyamalan’s style: “Twilight Zone”-type supernatural story line, blue-toned and sharply focused cinematography, nuanced performances (even by actors in need of discipline – Willis, anyone?), slow-but-steady pacing marked by SUDDEN surges of action, assured use of sound effects, other-worldly plots involving some sort of existential question (often with religion at its core).

And don’t forget that alone-in-the-dark feeling.

All of it comes in a package that has the confident feel of someone who knows what he wants and knows how to get it.

3. Shyamalan convinced Samuel L. Jackson to wear a ridiculous toupee.

In Shyamalan’s fourth film, “Unbreakable” (2000), Samuel L. Jackson allowed himself to be shot wearing a toupee that looks even more stupid than the one Tarantino put on him for “Pulp Fiction.”

Yet it works. “Unbreakable” tells the story of an ordinary guy named David Dunn (Willis again), a security guard whose life changes when he survives a train crash. Not only is he the sole survivor, he emerges from the crush of iron and steel without a scratch.

Whoa. Pretty soon, David is contacted by an eccentric guy (Jackson, with the bad ‘do) who tells him that he’s not just ordinary, he’s extraordinary. And just that quick, we’re off. Our super-powered hero even brings a killer psychopath to justice.

Yet “Unbreakable” made only a third of the money that “The Sixth Sense” brought in ($294 million to date), and the reviews were mixed at best.

Following blockbuster success is never easy.

4. Shyamalan loves comic books.

As with the best of modern comic books, “Unbreakable” is multidimensional. It’s no “X-Men”-type summer-movie blockbuster that favors action over thought, jokes over serious issues.

It’s a story of revelation. Of a man learning about himself – about the extent, and limitations, of his powers – then trying to figure out where the rest of his life will lead him.

Shyamalan tries, not altogether successfully, to integrate the worlds of fiction and fact. But then that’s exactly the point.

Some concepts just don’t meld smoothly. As Jackson’s character says, “Real life doesn’t fit into little boxes that were drawn for it.”

5. Shyamalan makes religion palatable to the masses.

Then there’s the question of faith.

“Unbreakable” has an abrupt ending. But instead of focusing on what’s missing, you need to look at what’s there: an open question.

Shyamalan wants to portray how difficult it is to find, and then maintain, a sense of faith in a dangerous world. Just as Cole and David endure, so then can we, no matter how we define the faith that aids us in the effort.

That faith includes everything from zen to the beliefs of the actor whom Shyamalan snared for his fifth film, “Signs.”

Mel Gibson? Director of a little Christian film called “The Passion of the Christ”?

6. Shyamalan offers a cure for the Spielberg Cute Alien Syndrome.

“Signs” is more “War of the Worlds” than “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.” Most of all, though, it’s an exercise in the testing of faith.

Gibson plays a widowed farmer named Graham who lives with his children Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin) and his younger brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix).

In the wake of his wife’s accidental death, ex-pastor Graham has given up on faith.

“There is no one looking out for us,” he tells his children. “We are all alone.”

Then strange things start occurring at the Circle K, Ted. Graham’s corn fields get trampled in curious patterns. Is it the work of vandals? Of pranksters? Or is it aliens?

“Signs” then evolves, Shyamalan-style, into the story of a family banding together in the face of threat. Ultimately, their facing up to that threat helps heal their frayed relationships.

And in light of what looks like a miracle, Graham re-examines his belief in a higher power.

7. Shyamalan knows how to sell himself.

And now we have “The Village,” a film about villagers who live in an idyllic, Amish-like farm setting, surrounded by deep, dark woods that harbor dangerous creatures.

The truce that has long reigned between the village and the creatures now has been broken.

The psychological aspects are pure Brothers Grimm: Red is a dangerous color, the village itself is a place of secrets, there is security in peace and order, the young who break rules are a threat to all.

And if we haven’t learned all this from the trailers that have been playing for months, then there was the recent Sci Fi Channel “documentary” that was really just a kind of “Blair Witch”-type hoax.

Ha-ha on us. No filmmaker today knows how to market his work better than Shyamalan.

Thing is, his work always manages to match the hype.

And that’s not just unusual, not just good.

It’s great.