MURKY EXCESSES HURT `DREAMS'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Having your mind invaded by a malevolent consciousness is a natural for fright flicks. It involves losing control, going mad, seeing things . . . all those primal fears.

It's why the ``Nightmare on Elm Street'' movies seemed to go on forever. And also why it often felt like forever watching them. While mental takeover may be a great, scary subject, it's also an invitation to incoherence. With so much of a film taking place in surreal, subjective dream worlds, directors tend to fill them with any old image that strikes their fancy.

With ``In Dreams,'' Neil Jordan is the latest filmmaker to embrace that syndrome. He's also one of the best; when at peak performance, as he was with ``The Crying Game,'' ``Michael Collins'' and last year's exquisitely demented ``The Butcher Boy,'' the Irish director weds brilliant imagery with unforgettable storytelling.

``In Dreams'' has a vast supply of great pictures, but they hurt as much as help the film's murky, slip-sliding narrative. Based on Bari Wood's novel ``Doll's Eyes'' and re-scripted by Jordan from a screenplay by Bruce Robinson (``The Killing Fields''), the movie is rich with frightening premonitions and lyrical underwater sequences (a small town was built, then flooded, in the same Baja water tanks where James Cameron shot ``Titanic'').

It all sets an agreeably creepy mood, and even when things get brutal and bloody, the visuals are at least as attractive as they are repulsive, thanks a great deal to ``Seven'' cinematographer Darius Khondji. But they also keep the story anchored to a level of confused hooey.

Annette Bening plays New England book illustrator Claire Cooper. Slightly psychic all her life, she's plagued by incomprehensible visions of a child killer just as little girls in her leafy, rural community start turning up in the reservoir where that town used to be. When her own daughter goes missing, Claire's mental state naturally deteriorates.

At least, that's what her slightly straying husband (Aidan Quinn) and clueless psychiatrist (Stephen Rea) think. They just don't understand that there's a long-haired, squeaky-voiced, sometimes cross-dressing psycho-killer mama's boy messing around inside her skull and - even more alarming - he's played by Robert Downey Jr.

Most viewers will share hubby and Doc's point of view: What actually is going on here is pretty hard to understand. We're in Claire's dreams one moment, then the killer's past, or perhaps an asylum where the policies apparently haven't been updated since the days of Bedlam. We're in the 1960s, underwater, in a computer, surrounded by apples . . . sometimes all in the same scene. Some of this feels like it makes sense, but usually there's precious little solid evidence of that.

Besides how great everything looks, the movie is worth seeing for Bening, an actress who has always seemed to be capable of much more than she's normally asked to do. Bening really gets a chance to let it rip here, though, as Claire is pushed to the outer edges of stress and sanity, then forced to call up all the seductiveness she can muster when finally confronting her tormentor in the flesh.

Jordan may not have been certain about what he was doing with ``In Dreams.'' But Annette Bening sure was.

THE FACTS

The film: ``In Dreams'' (R; violence, sex, language, children in jeopardy).

The stars: Annette Bening, Robert Downey Jr., Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Neil Jordan. Written by Jordan and Bruce Robinson. Produced by Stephen Woolley. Released by DreamWorks Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 40 minutes.

Playing: Citywide

Our rating: Two and one half stars

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Photo

Photo: In ``In Dreams,'' Annette Bening plays an illustrator who, slightly psychic all her life, is plagued by visions of a child killer.