Ben and Laurie are just the kind of cute, all-American teenagers you might find in a Wes Craven movie. They’re driving to Shadow Lake to film a mockumentary on the site where a group of oversexed, underemployed camp counselors were slaughtered - which is, of course, an ancient Indian burial ground. What could possibly go wrong?

"Bloody Mary," the first of four spooky one-acts in "Dread Awakening," is written with devilish glee by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who clearly knows his horror movies (and whose "Based on a Totally True Story" has also just opened). Ben (Jedadiah Schultz as a Freddie Prinze Jr.-type jock) makes the case to his blond, ditsy girlfriend (Christianna Nelson channeling Sarah Michelle Gellar) that getting scared is better than sex: "I believe that it’s when you’re scared that you feel most alive." And during the best moments of this show, he is proved absolutely right.

"Pearls," the second offering, written by Clay McLeod Chapman, is the most assured bit of storytelling, one in which the surprises don’t hit you over the head. They slowly and subtly sink in. It stars Robert Funaro, last seen dangling from a noose in this season’s first episode of "The Sopranos." Now very much alive, he plays a dentist (a sure warning sign) who is positively vibrating with excitement over his girlfriend and delivers Mr. Chapman’s muscular descriptions of dentistry with a swooning passion. It’s a loopy portrayal that brings to mind the cracked intensity and delusions of Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver."

The next two shorts don’t live up to the promise of the show’s first half. Justin Swain’s "Treesfall" tells a bland story about a love triangle that leads to predictable violence. Eric Sanders’s "Sleep Mask" has a nice premise: a woman (Jenny Gammello), who is not sure if she is dreaming, discovers her husband (Joe Plummer) wearing a black, skin-tight skeleton mask, which he refuses to take off. But after the original set-up, the show never really goes anywhere you didn’t expect it to, and the odd tension doesn’t escalate.

Theater in New York has generally steered clear of the horror genre, but that has been starting to change downtown. Playwrights like Anne Washburn and Daniel MacIvor have written about ghosts and killers who are frightening enough to curl your toes. While this collection of shorts, all darkly lighted inside the black brick 45th Street Theater, is only partly successful, producers need only look at the blood-drenched screens at crowded movie theaters to discover that awakening dread has its possibilities.

"Dread Awakening" runs through April 23 at the 45th Street Theater, 354 West 45th Street, Clinton, (212) 868-4444.