Characters are treated similarly, represented by across-the-board with lifeless performances that speak primarily in exposition (often repeating the obvious) and never create that essential core of anxiety. But every time “The Unspoken” uses a cheap jump scare or fake-out that ends with Angela waking up from a ghostly nightmare, the cheapness is ever present. With that low standard of assembly and representation, there’s a huge sense of disingenuous artifice throughout “The Unspoken.” If a horror film is so resigned to cliches, it should at least help viewers forget they’re watching a screen, or worse, a series of shots and sets.

To put it nicely, “The Unspoken” is an ad-lib horror script, with the most original idea being a character named “Pandy.” While dealing with the odd bumps-in-the-daytime inside the infamous Briar House-the setting for dead bodies and blood 17 years prior-a group of comically aggressive, Disney Channel-ready young male ruffians (led by Anthony Konechny’s Luther) want to attack the house and take the “stash” they left in the basement when the house was abandoned for so long. To the fault of co-writer/director Sheldon Wilson’s lack of ideas, “The Unspoken” treats that attitude as the standard, and the results are much less funny-instead it’s a stone serious, desaturated-as-hell story about an infamous, possibly haunted house, an overly nice mother ( Pascale Hutton’s Jeanie) who moves into it with her mute young son ( Sunny Suljic’s Adrian), and the young woman ( Jodelle Ferland’s Angela) who finds herself in the worst babysitting gig in town. “The Unspoken” indirectly recalls the parodic films of the Wayans brothers, in that their serious intentions extend to merely representing the genres, while fulfilling character or narrative is second priority.

The unspoken name