During her reign as Hollywood’s patron saint of distressed housewives, Julianne Moore has contended with everything from gay husbands (“Far From Heaven”) to sexual identity issues (“The Hours”) to multi-symptomatic suburban malaise (“Safe”). She’s a Bizarro-world June Cleaver, forever trapped in a mutated facsimile of the American Dream.

Moore’s long, dark Tupperware party of the soul continues in “The Forgotten,” a nerve-rattling tale of wounded motherhood, paranoia and strange men in no-wrinkle slacks. As Brooklyn book editor Telly Paretta, Moore finds her picturesque brownstone existence thrown into upheaval by an airplane crash that kills her 9-year-old son, Sam. A year after the funeral, Telly is still emotionally gridlocked by her loss — like a compulsive eater, she stashes photographs and mementos of Sam around the house, binging on her grief.

When said photographs and all physical evidence of her son disappear almost overnight, Telly accuses her husband (Anthony Edwards) of strong-arming her healing process. Telly’s shrink, Dr. Munce (Gary Sinise), offers an alternative explanation: There never was a Sam. He was a “manufactured memory” stemming from a miscarriage nine years ago. Telly’s inability to produce photos of the boy just means she’s finally emerging from the fog.

Deftly conjuring an air of disjointed, drunken reality, director Joseph Ruben (“Dreamscape,” “True Believer”) tempts us to doubt Telly’s sanity. Sam’s Mets baseball cap, for instance, looks awfully pristine for something that enjoyed daily use by a 9-year-old. What’s more, Telly is constantly vexed, reaching for coffee cups that don’t exist and finding her car in places she didn’t park it. Most damning, her neighbor has no recollection of Sam, even though she babysat the child and took him to baseball games. Composer James Horner (“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn”) chips in a nice dead-string guitar riff that serves as creepy theme music for Telly’s head battles.

Telly teams up with Ash Correll (Dominic West from “Rock Star”), a former New York Rangers hockey player who also lost a child in the plane crash and wonders why National Security Agency spooks have suddenly taken an interest in Telly’s case. A cagey New York police detective (Alfre Woodard in a stock role) wonders the same thing.

At this point, the question of Telly’s mental health takes a backseat to the mysterious confederacy of G-men and otherworldly forces that would deprive Telly and Ash not only of their children, but their memories, too. Going on the lam, they see faint, saucer-shaped impressions in the midnight clouds. They’re hounded by a well-groomed, apparently invincible man in beige Dockers (Linus Roache from “Beyond Borders”) and witness a startling, head-flipping special effect that will make “X-Files” fans go goofy.

Scripted by veteran screenwriter Gerald Di Pego (“Sharky’s Machine,” “Phenomenon”), “The Forgotten” is more satisfying in pieces than it is fully assembled. Moore and West are good, but not particularly good together — their best, rawest scenes are those they perform alone.

“The Forgotten” reveals itself as an earnest meditation on the special bond between mothers and children, which is fine and even somewhat touching, but hardly the sort of mind-bending high concept it initially seems to promise. Moore, at least, fares well — finally beating the domestic victim thing like the bad mother she is.