That's enough distance for filmmakers, amazingly hands-off up to now, to start measuring some of the damage to the national psyche. And, as if tying in with this anniversary, that's what Wes Craven's daring new thriller, "Red Eye," tries to do.

The film, which deals with a woman trapped in an airplane next to a terrorist, goes painfully traditional in its last act, but until then it's an extraordinary exercise in claustrophobia: a movie Hitchcock might have made about our 9/11 paranoia.

Craven's heroine is Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams), a sensitive young woman on a night flight from Dallas, where she's just attended her grandmother's funeral, to Miami, where she's a workaholic executive of a beachfront hotel in which the new deputy secretary of Homeland Security is about to check in.

The first half-hour of the movie's tight, 85-minute running time is taken up with one long sequence that rubs our faces in the agony of modern airline travel: the crowds, the security, the delays, the furious passengers, the snippy flight attendants, the cramped spaces, the white-knuckle turbulence.

The next half-hour is a tense drama that takes place during Lisa's flight and mostly within the confines of her seat as she finds herself sitting next to a handsome, charming young man (Cillian Murphy) whom she gradually discovers is a hired assassin involved in an epic terrorist plot of which she is a vital element.

Making a rare excursion into the straight thriller genre, horror-veteran Craven ("A Nightmare on Elm Street") builds this situation with no gimmicks, few false beats and a series of strokes that subtly, skillfully prod all the new generation of fears the past five years have given us.

Is he exploiting 9/11? Shamelessly. And yet allusions to this national wound have been so respectfully and obsessively avoided by filmmakers for so long that there's actually something therapeutic -- and liberating -- about a movie that so straightforwardly forces us to deal with its psychological implications.

The movie is bold in other ways as well, not the least of which is that it defies all the conventional wisdom of contemporary thriller-making by developing at a slower pace, concentrating its action in a limited setting and contenting itself with being essentially a two-character piece.

As an acting vehicle, the movie also shines. Murphy ("Batman Forever") is suitably chilling as the one-note villain and McAdams ("The Wedding Crashers") gives a real performance. The camera loves her, she's got that indefinable something extra and, if it makes any money, she'll probably emerge from the movie as a star.

With so much going for it, it's sad that "Red Eye" goes into such a third-act tailspin and cliched slasher-flick finale. Clearly, either Craven couldn't think of anything to do with his stunning setup, or he just couldn't risk completely disappointing his more mindlessly bloodthirsty traditional audience.

Too bad. Had he been only a little more daring, and trusted his instincts and his material a little more faithfully, this could have been an Oscar-worthy experiment in terror that could have redefined Craven as a filmmaker and pulled him right out of that ghetto of low-budget horror where he's dwelled for more than three decades.

The film feels like a throwback to the days of taut television dramas or B-movies made by ambitious directors. This summer's audiences have clearly demonstrated an impatience for tired, big-bucks formula pictures, so this lean-and-mean thriller might well do better business than movies costing three or four times as much.

First you meet the heroine, Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams), a Miami luxury hotel manager, as she rushes to make a Dallas-to-Miami red-eye flight while talking her flustered assistant manager (Jayma Mays) through a minor crisis on her cell phone. Here is a woman who is professional, focused, possibly anal -- but you're on her side.

As bad weather and flight delays strand thousands at the airport, Lisa happens to meet a seemingly friendly and charming fellow traveler in Jackson (Cillian Murphy). The same fellow just happens to occupy the seat next to hers when the flight is cleared to take off. Yet there is something in the steely stare of his pale blue eyes and his overly calm manner that gives you the creeps.

Immediately after a bumpy takeoff, Jackson drops the nice-guy pose. He is a cog in an assassination wheel that aims to take out the deputy secretary of homeland security, who will check into Lisa's hotel the next morning. She is to do exactly as he instructs or a killer standing by at the Miami home of her father (Brian Cox) will take out her dad. Jackson demonstrates to Lisa that summoning help from any of the airline staff or passengers will not be helpful. Which doesn't stop her from trying -- and failing.

Actually, the entire in-fight section of the movie is a ruse. Only when the plane lands does all hell break loose. Yet Craven has so smartly directed this section with quick scenes, perfectly timed music cues and small dramas among the various passengers that the movie has you in its grip. And Ellsworth makes certain that all the elements of character, backstory and environment play directly into the developing drama. Nothing is extraneous.

There are holes in the script, but none is obvious until you are returning home and have one of those "Hey-wait-a-minute" moments. Things unfold with perfect logic while the projector is running. Afterward, you might carp about why the bad weather didn't disrupt the bad guys' plans more, why Jackson's cell phone wouldn't be fully charged or why he would take Lisa's counteroffensive so personally. Yet when such things happen, everything seems plausible.

McAdams makes a terrific heroine for this story: She is seemingly vulnerable but possesses a past and a determination that Jackson failed to discover in his study of his victim. Murphy is pure malevolence, using his unusual face and physical presence to suggest all sorts of nasty surprises.

In her feature debut, Mays is marvelous as the bright-eyed, nervous assistant who is not good at multitasking yet somehow pulls through. Admittedly, Cox is stuck in a true stay-at-home role, possibly a misuse of such a fine actor, but his presence does raise the stakes.

Craven's technical crew make all the right movies -- from Marco Beltrami's nerve-tingling score to Robert Yeoman's fluid camera in confined spaces and the rhythmic build of tension engineered by Patrick Lussier and Stuart Levy's editing.