`HALLOWEEN: H20' SCARES WITH FAMILY BRAND OF FRIGHT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Boasting one good idea and a relatively restrained approach to the requisite sadism, ``Halloween: H20'' is surprisingly watchable for the sixth sequel in a slasher film series.

Even if it doesn't think that's what it is. Conceived by returning series heroine Jamie Lee Curtis, ``H20'' (the title is supposed to indicate that this is a 20th anniversary tribute to John Carpenter's original fright fest, not some underwater version) is more like ``Halloween'' and two-thirds. It ignores everything from the other sequels except ``Halloween II's'' revelation that Curtis' tormented baby sitter, Laurie Strode, is actually the sister of mad masked murderer Michael Myers.

Twenty years after that fateful October night, we find Strode, who has changed her name to Teri Tate, running a tony co-ed boarding school set in a conveniently isolated California canyon. How she does her job is anybody's guess, since Laurie/Teri is a total wreck: addicted to booze and tranquilizers, bitter about a divorce (she's having a desultory affair with an expendable guidance counselor played by Adam Arkin) and borderline schizophrenic. Hallucinations of Myers visitations increase as the 20th anniversary of his attack nears.

This characterization, if you haven't guessed, is the film's good idea. About the only thing keeping the poor woman together is her love for her son, John (newcomer Josh Hartnett), a senior at the school who is chafing under his mother's increasingly unreasonable overprotectiveness.

While most of the student body is off on a Halloween camping trip, John stays behind on the now creepy, semi-deserted campus with his girlfriend Molly (``Dawson's Creek's'' Michelle Williams) and another young couple. Mom doesn't know they're there, but somehow Uncle Michael does, and he breaks out of the asylum just to make their holiday a memorable one.

Directed by Steve Miner, who was responsible for several entries in the inferior ``Friday the 13th'' splatter series, ``H20'' incorporates most of the ideas films like this slashed to death long ago. Curtains billow, the predator is impossibly, ridiculously unstoppable, and he really doesn't like the idea of young people having sex.

Yet Miner is more interested in atmospherics than explicit gore, which is both a blessing and a curse. Relentless, subjective tracking shots, sudden inexplicable appearances and musical motifs borrowed from Carpenter's original score are the main component parts of the film's suspense-building strategy. Just like they have been for dozens of horror movies made since 1978.

The picture's humor is much more pleasing, partially due to its restraint. ``H20'' is not nearly as jokey as the ``Scream'' movies ``Halloween'' so satisfyingly inspired, despite the participation of those films' creator, Kevin Williamson, as an executive producer and uncredited writer here. Indeed, ``H20's'' film-savvier gags are clearly Williamson's doing; keep an eye out for all the ``Psycho'' references in the cameo appearance by Curtis' mother, Janet Leigh.

And Curtis herself is ``H20's'' saving grace, literally and figuratively. Both fierce and funny, she's so alive in every scene she's like a one-woman riposte to the movie's - and the genre's - sick obsession with death. Beyond that, she projects Laurie Strode's poignancy with a tough economy that never begs for sympathy - and when the time comes to face the demon that's haunted Laurie for 20 years, well, Curtis leaves no doubt that blood is thicker than many of us would like to think.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Halloween: H20'' (R; violence, language, substance abuse).

The stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, LL Cool J, Janet Leigh.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Steve Miner. Written by Robert Zappia, Matt Greenberg and Kevin Williamson. Produced by Paul Freeman. Released by Dimension Films.

Running time: One hour, 30 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her role as would-be victim of evil Michael Myers (who's also her character's brother) in ``Halloween: H20.''