When, exactly, did midwinter become horror-movie season? The pre-Oscars dumping ground of movies that weren't marketable enough for the holidays and not good enough for the spring is overrun with boogeymen this year.

Including "Boogeyman," which, as genre fright-fests go, isn't all bad. It's roughly twice as scary as that Dakota/De Niro "Shining" rip-off. It's twice as funny as Debra Messing's "The Wedding Date." And you can't even put the end of Tara Reid's career, "Alone in the Dark," in the same conversation, competence-wise.

Suppose there really is something in your closet. Suppose all those milk-carton kids were grabbed by something primal, supernatural and evil. Suppose you saw it grab your dad when you were 8, and you've never lived anywhere with closet doors since.

No, nobody would take you seriously. Barry Watson of TV's "Seventh Heaven" plays Tim, the guy who wonders if the things that go bump in the night are in his head, or in his closet.

He hallucinates some pretty scary stuff, memories of his haunted, twisted mom, played by the one-time warrior princess, Lucy Lawless. When Mom dies, Tim goes to the funeral and vows to confront the demons of his past by spending one night in the absurdly gothic house he grew up in.

People close to him — his girlfriend (Tory Mussert) and his childhood girlfriend (Emily Deschanel, sister of Zooey) — seem to disappear. A maze of closets leads him from one frightening memory or hallucination to the next.

And a strange little girl may have the answers to the puzzle and the solution to Tim's problem.

"Is it true? The Boogeyman took your dad?"

Yeah, it's dumb, and it takes a long time to get to scenes that amount to anything other than cheap scares. But "Boogeyman" is not entirely artless. Tim's nightmares — of waking up in bed with Mom, or being surrounded by the grasping, pleading hands of every child who has ever turned up on a milk carton — are doozies.

Horror movies are all about the gotchas, and Stephen Kay manages those well. Whiplash editing, horrors only glimpsed in shadows and a shrieking soundtrack will raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

The macabre humor of the piece extends to its cheap shocks. A raven crashes into your windshield — why not use the wipers to try and flick it off?

Of course, the script misses more laughs than it hits. But making the cast play this straight was the right choice.

The "Boogeyman" doesn't live in the static of your TV ("White Noise"), a "Jeepers Creepers" cave, or Norman Bates' house. But the movies keep him alive. Because every time we jump with fright, we're reminded just how alive we still are, and how the right lighting, editing and sound effects can make us as gullible as teenagers, if only for an hour or so.

"Boogeyman" is rated PG-13 for intense scenes of horror/terror violence and some partial nudity. Running time: 86 minutes.