D-

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” someone says on several occasions in the course of “They,” a film about the “night terrors” from which children often suffer. It’s a reasonable comment in response to the psychological condition, perhaps, but a sad commentary when made with reference to a horror movie that tries to scare the socks off you and fails miserably–like this one.

“They” is preceded in advertisements with the words “Wes Craven Presents,” which is curious since the director’s name appears nowhere in the credits. Maybe his involvement stems merely from his being in bondage to Miramax, whose Dimension subsidiary made the picture (in conjunction with Focus Features, the erstwhile USA Films–as if a bomb like this needed two companies behind it). Or perhaps it was merely thought prudent, from a legal standpoint, to include him somehow in a project that’s so clearly derivative of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (at one point the heroine is terrified of going to sleep lest “they” will grab her in the dark). The plot–thin as it is–is based on the premise that urchins who are terrified by bogeymen in the closet and creatures under the bed are actually being accosted by some gruesome entities who come into the normal world through the darkness, and are “marked”by them for later abduction and, it would seem, consumption. (They’re implanted, the story appears to say, with some sort of homing device under the skin that later festers to indicate that they’ve fattened up sufficiently to provide a tasty meal. Or maybe not–Brendan William Hood’s script isn’t terribly clear on these points.) In any event, after a brief prelude showing a tyke dragged screaming under his bed nineteen years ago, the flick lurches into the present, where we’re introduced to Julia (Laura Regan), a twenty- something working on an M.A. in Psychology while bedding her good-natured boyfriend Paul (Marc Blucas, Riley from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). Julia is contacted by her old childhood chum Billy (Jon Abrahams), presumably the kid from the prologue, a tormented soul who informs her that “they” are back (shades of Stephen King’s “It”) and promptly offs himself before her horrified eyes. At his funeral she’s approached by Billy’s troubled roommates Sam (Ethan Embry) and Terry (Dagmara Dominczyk). They’re in the same boat as Billy was, and believe that Julia is, too. There follow a series of disconnected, formulaic fright sequences in which various characters wander off into the darkness and are sucked up by the unseen creatures lurking in the shadows. These are interrupted by episodes in which an increasingly distraught Julia seeks out psychological assistance that proves to be singularly ineffective.

Director Robert Harmon is an old hand at using the tropes of the genre (off-screen whispers, quasi-strobe lighting, sudden apparitions) to elicit some suspense and shocks–he made the eerie, ambiguous “The Hitcher” back in 1986. But in that case he was blessed by a script by Eric Red that had satisfying twists and an intriguing subtext. Here all he has to work with is a narrative that might better have been relegated to the trash heap after Disney sent up its subject so delightfully in “Monsters, Inc.” All Hood provides him with are such tired old bits of business as the darkened swimming pool in which something lurks under the waves (the old “Cat People” gambit), the creaky elevator that starts and stops on its way to destruction, the car that mysteriously dies in the middle of nowhere, and the spooky subway devoid of all signs of life. Harmon spruces up these moments as best he can, but it’s a losing battle; ultimately “They” becomes an old-fashioned bore. The cast is lost in the shuffle. Regan is a shapely but colorless heroine, and she and Blucas have absolutely no chemistry: the banter between them is positively painful in its phoniness. Embry and Dominczyk, meanwhile, never get beyond the irritating stage. When you find yourself rooting for the monsters in a horror movie, you know the picture is in trouble.

Another oddity about “They” is that Dimension is releasing the picture for the Thanksgiving holiday. Perhaps that’s because the studio will be thankful to be rid of it, or because they think that viewers will give thanks when its numbing denouement rolls around; or maybe it’s just a subtle way of informing us that they know it’s a turkey, too. In any event, if you’re searching for a better thriller with a pronoun for a title, skip the nominative and be objective–rent “Them!” (1954) instead. That Cold War monster movie has a group of stalwart heroes battling a bunch of giant mutant ants–and rest assured, it’s no picnic. Rest assured that it also fits the holiday bill, since one of the humans involved is none other than the true Santa Claus, Edmund Gwenn, whose St. Nick turn in the original “Miracle on 34th Street” is a Thanksgiving perennial. As for the present sad effort, you might say that it can be summed up in a query that Sam poses to Julia late in the running-time: “You feel that something bad is happening, right?” Right, Sam.