Preteens whose eyes look upon Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour have a good chance of being turned off thrillers for good. It has nothing to do with violent content or any foul language, for Sarah Landon is as family-friendly as they come. The problem? It's too family-friendly and ends up being bland and flavorless instead of sending even the mildest shiver down your spine.

Sarah Landon (Rissa Walters) is an average 17-year-old girl, a San Diego resident still trying to recover from her best friend's death. As an attempt to leave such sadness behind, Sarah takes up an offer to spend a few days with her dearly departed friend's grandmother (Jane Harris) in the sleepy town of Pine Valley. However, not everything is as peaceful as it seems, for Sarah barely sets foot in town before becoming wrapped up in a rather strange mystery. It seems that local kid David (Brian Comrie) has been living in fear ever since his uncle Ben (Rusty Hanes) marked him for death as a little one, as payback for his own son's death in a car accident in which David's mom was at the wheel. Ben died not long after his son did, but David is convinced that at midnight on his 21st birthday, Ben will strike back at him from beyond the grave. Both Sarah and David's brother Matt (Dan Comrie) remain skeptical about his claims, but as one coincidence after another piles up, they can't help wondering if David is telling the truth. Maybe Ben's angry spirit won't rest until he's wrapped up his unfinished business.

Sarah Landon aims squarely at the Nancy Drew crowd. The film positions Sarah herself to be an iconic role model for girls in the same way as Carolyn Keene's plucky sleuth. The big difference between the two, however, involves Sarah never really getting  around to doing any sleuthing. The film is a prime example of a mystery that's not a mystery at all,  but rather a story in which the hero (or, in this case, heroine) talks to one or two people who pretty much spell everything out for her. There's not much investigating going on in Sarah Landon, but boy, does it come packed with people sitting around and talking. However, my concern isn't about too much dialogue, it's about the quality of that dialogue. For as low-key and harmless as it appears to be, Sarah Landon has one of the goofiest scripts in recent memory, one in which the characters sort of accept the idea of the supernatural at face value and hardly display even the slightest hints of cynicism. As a viewer, you can't help wondering who in their right minds would take any minute of this stuff seriously.

The answer to that question is a cinematic clan known as the Comrie family. I'd never heard of them before, but apparently, the Comries held enough sway or gathered enough cash notonly to make Sarah Landon what looks suspiciously like on-the-fly but also to  give it a fairly wide theatrical release. From how well the film fared both critically and financially, this brood had better find another trade -- and fast. Director Lisa Comrie (who wrote the script with another Comrie, John) fails to save the film from looking every bit as cheap as it probably was to make. In addition, some unintentional hilarity comes as a result of the performances given by Brian and Dan Comrie as the brothers at the center of story; Brian is especially awful, so wooden in his role you'd think he was being played by Pinocchio. Unfortunately, the film's curse of inadequacy manages to extend outside the Comrie clan, as Walters, while she looks natural compared to those twentysomethings still stuck playing teens, doesn't bring much energy of her own to the table.

Still, Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour is not completely awful. There's a chance the little ones might dig the movie's central mystery, and whenever the camera is allowed to roam freely, some very pretty wilderness shots make their way into the film. All in all, though, Sarah Landon is no better than those dozens of straight-to-DVD family movies that go unnoticed every year -- and, as a matter of fact, it deserves to be treated as such.

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by Sony Pictures and rated "PG" for thematic elements, mild peril and language.)