TV Reviews : Give Up the Ghost on ‘Death Dreams’

The supernatural potboiler “Death Dreams” (tonight at 9 on the Lifetime cable network), which has the good fortune to have actors as watchable as Christopher Reeve and Marg Helgenberger playing with spooks, kills off--and then brings back--the lead couple’s drowned daughter faster than you can say “Don’t look now.”

Meanwhile, don’t look now is pretty good advice for anyone thinking of tuning in this all-wet telepicture, which wavers back and forth between being a seriously intoned advertisement for post-death experiences and a thrills and chills ghost story. Eventually, it settles solidly and shamelessly into the latter mode.

As the film opens, we can see that super-rich Reeve may be a tad jealous of the close relationship between Helgenberger and her 7-year-old daughter by a previous marriage. So when--not long after the lakeside “accident”--the late little girl starts appearing to mom with cryptic messages, it’s not hard to foresee that she may be returning to this realm to shed new light on how stepdad fit into the circumstances of her death.

Reeve has his wife placed in a psychiatric ward for observation because of her ghostly visitations, but she escapes and meets up with a more sympathetic shrink (frizzy-haired Fionnula Flanagan) who believes in communion with the dead. This all leads to an unlikely showdown in court where both Reeve and supernaturalism are on trial, followed by an inevitable hokey denouement in which karma from beyond the grave accomplishes what earthly justice can’t.

Helgenberger (an Emmy winner for “China Beach”) excels in what is, to say the least, a challenging role. The best thing about the picture, she gives posthumous life to Robert Glass’ increasingly incredible script till it and everyone involved all give up the ghost.