The point of horror movies has always been to scare us, but in a way that keeps us coming back for more. The sequel industry got a major boost from franchises like “Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Friday the 13th,” and “Scream” (and even the “Scary Movie” parodies), where we revisit the terror of some supernatural force on new, innocent victims. The appeal of the WB’s new series “Supernatural” has to do with its twist on the formula; it takes a spooky villain and slaps it together with a teen-dream version of “Ghostbusters” to result in a genuinely scary hour of television. This show will find an audience, and deserves to – it’s a fresh concept, a gift to a young-adult audience starved for them.

In the midst of all its other-worldly doings, “Supernatural” manages to address one of storytelling’s enduring themes: the search of children for their father, and the desire to connect with parental figures. The series begins with the horrifying death of a young mother, in full view of her husband and sons – she’s slapped against the ceiling by an unseen force, turned into a ghost, and surrounded by flames. (It ain’t pretty.) When we cut to the present, one son, Sam, has landed as a law student at Stanford, while the other, Dean, drives around somewhat more aimlessly in his souped-up 1967 Chevrolet Impala with ghost-busting paraphernalia in the trunk. When Dean shows up with the news that their dad has gone missing again, we don’t need a lot of exposition to make it clear that this all has something to do with that inciting event in their childhood – and the different ways the surviving family members dealt with that tragic event.

The boys set out on a search for their father, which takes them into the dark corners of small-town America. Their dad’s trail leads them to a beautiful young woman who has her own ghostly powers to attract, and then destroy her victims. (It’s a neat trick I won’t reveal here.) All this is set against the backdrop of paternal longing; the boys never stop searching for clues to their obsessed father’s whereabouts, and use a grab bag of tricks (fake FBI credentials among them) to stay on his trail. They seem a bit too remarkably resourceful – I didn’t quite buy when Dean extricated himself from police handcuffs with a handy paper clip – but hey, this is television, right? We must keep moving along.

The actors on “Supernatural” have those same impossibly square jaws of their compatriots on the new Fox lineup, but these boys can act. The performances by Jared Padalecki as Sam and Jensen Ackles as Dean have some real energy and fun – they’ll more than satisfy the needs of the audience for young heroes. (The director of the “Supernatural” pilot also helmed episodes of “Smallville,” a Superman story.) And the show is sprinkled liberally with character actors and side stories meant to keep the rest of us hooked, too.

What makes “Supernatural” a likely hit is its deft delivery of a self-contained horror plot within a premise that’s meant to keep us coming back week after week. While the boys survive the short-term threats posed in the pilot, there’s no telling what manifestation of terror will surface in future episodes, or where the story is ultimately going. In that sense it owes a debt to “The X-Files” (and makes a sly reference to that show at one point), not to mention a touch of “Route 66” in its use of cool cars and the open road. “Supernatural” seems likely to have plenty of tricks up its sleeve, and would seem to be a slam-dunk hit for a network in need of one. If you like the idea of being scared in between commercials for skin cream, “Supernatural” is for you. It’s unexpectedly smart and unpredictably spooky, and that’s a potent combination.

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One final thought about “Entourage,” the HBO show about Hollywood hangers-on that everyone loved to love: Yes, the second season worked in far more interesting ways than the first, and yes, Jeremy Piven as agent Ari Gold is reason enough to watch. (Although “hugging it out” hardly deserves its newfound cult status as an original phrase; in fact, there’s little about Mr. Piven’s performance here that differs from his dozens of other appearances as an over-caffeinated jerk in recent years.) But does anyone else share my feeling that there’s something strangely sad and hollow about these three sycophants feeding off a second-level celebrity? By the end of Season 2, these four guys basically went nowhere without each other; you half expected to see Turtle hovering outside the bathroom door while Vince was inside, holding a spare roll of toilet paper for his boss.(Turtle’s role finally became so superfluous that the show’s producers gave him a gig of his own, as a record producer.) Their relationships seem unrealistic at best and slightly perverse at worst. Whereas the girls of “Sex and the City” only got together for brunches and parties, these four fellas can’t seem to separate. Let’s face it – “Entourage” makes absolutely no sense at all. Next season, how about giving these guys lives of their own?