`MIMIC' LOOKS REALLY GREAT, BUT SCRIPT MIGHT BUG YOU.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

``Mimic'' has a few bugs in it. Stylish and, at least initially, an intelligent cut above your average mutant insect horror flick, the movie ultimately creeps away from its cleverer notions into standard genre situations.

But even when it reaches its slime-covered, gut-gouging, shriek-and-run depths, ``Mimic'' almost succeeds at imitating a class act. Guillermo Del Toro, who directed the more interesting Mexican vampire film ``Cronos,'' is incapable of shooting a dull frame, and the brilliantly sick Rob Bottin (``Seven,'' ``The Thing'') had a feeler in the creature designs. The show is an elaborate, gothic nightmare from its opening credits (over a montage of dead bug parts) to its apocalyptic conclusion.

If only the script looked as good. Things start out promisingly as a cockroach-borne disease threatens an entire generation of New York's children. Thank goodness for brilliant scientist Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino), who genetically engineers a new insect species, the Judas breed, and releases it into the sewers. In no time, the Judases mingle with and thoroughly sterilize the pestilence carriers, saving the children before their own congenital time bombs go off.

Or do they? Three years later, Tyler has married Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam), a cute guy from the Centers for Disease Control, and their celebrity-scientist lives would be perfect if she could just have a baby (a potentially, well, pregnant subplot that goes nowhere). But there's a bigger bug in the ointment; much bigger, in fact. Tyler deduces it has evolved from the supposedly died-out Judas breed, but she doesn't know the half of it.

To justify the film's title - although the story never really goes anywhere with this potentially terrifying premise, either - the soldier strains of the Judas breed have, like some of their smaller cousins, developed the capacity to mimic the appearance of their primary predators. In case you haven't guessed, that's us.

After a series of unexplainable killings and big piles of gooey waste material plague the city, Susan, Peter, a trash-talking transit cop (Charles S. Dutton), an Italian shoemaker (Giancarlo Giannini) and his autistic grandson (Alexander Goodwin, whose character has a special understanding of the creatures) all wind up trapped by thousands of the things in an abandoned subway station.

Once we reach this point, any ideas the film had been hatching get crushed by an avalanche of scenes that belong in an ``Alien'' movie. Between screams, Sorvino does her best to convince us that Susan's thinking real hard about how to undo her runaway experiment. Everyone else appears to be wondering where the smart movie they began went.

For those who like bug-splatter on a large scale, though, things only get progressively better.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Mimic'' (R; violence, language).

The stars: Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Charles S. Dutton, Josh Brolin, Giancarlo Giannini, F. Murray Abraham.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Written by Matthew Robbins and Del Toro, based on Donald A. Wolheim's short story. Produced by Bob Weinstein, B.J. Rack and Ole Bornedal. Released by Dimension Films.

Running time: One hour, 42 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating:Two and One Half Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo: Scientist husband-and-wife team Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) an d Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam) try to get the bugs out of ``Mimic.''