As pointless as it is pitiless, “The Strangers: Chapter 1” is one of the most cynical horror reboots in recent memory.

But it’s outperforming the far more entertaining “Abigail” and far better crafted “The First Omen,” and even puts Sydney Sweeney’s “Immaculate” out to pasture at the box office. Just underlines what every new “Planet of the Apes” and “King Kong” and “Fast and Furious” picture says about today’s cinema audience.

They only want to see what they’re already familiar with. So let’s serve up another helping of comfort food.

Two East Coasters (Madelaine Petsch, Froy Gutierrez) are crossing Oregon for a job interview in Portland, when their car breaks down in tiny Venus, a one diner, one drive-in, one garage village in “the literal middle of nowhere.”

The judgmental way the folks in the diner (Janis Ahern and Ema Horvath play the staff) treat Maya’s “vegetarian” menu questions, the supremely sketchy mechanic (Ben Cartwright, there’s a name out of Western lore) who just happens to be grinning at the window when their car won’t start should tip them off that this place is nowhere you want to “spend the night,” especially at “one them them Internet houses (AirBnB).”

Once in that remote, rustic rental, things go from bad to worse, but so slowly you almost forget this is a horror film.

Not really. Of all the ways this Renny Harlin (“Cutthroat Island”) thriller lets down the genre, maintaining a feeling of dread isn’t one of them.

The jolts — three masked intruders glimpsed in silhouette, INSIDE the house, in the dark outside, asking “IS Tamara here?” or cutting to the chase and waving an axe/machete/butcher knife — are a bust.

There’s a little suspense, but one can’t help but feel these two, slow to respond to the real threat, slow to put on pants or shoes, slow to “We should find a weapon” and start working the problem, are a lost cause.

Maybe a knife, or sticking together instead of splitting up, or stumbling across a shotgun or a trusty Jeep Cherokee will help. You think?

I remember liking the original “motiveless torturers/murderers” “Strangers” movie, but probably not a lot. The first sequel wasn’t much. But it was better than this.

Sometimes the over-the-top violence can be a saving grace in such genre films. Sometimes the villain makes them worth watching. Occasionally, the suspense atones for a world of shortcomings.

Not here. By the time “Chapter 1” offers up “To Be Continued,” we can’t say we weren’t warned. About the next one, any way.

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Madelaine Petsch, Froy Gutierrez, Ema Horvath, Janis Ahern and Ben Cartwright

Credits: Directed by Renny Harlin, scripted by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland. A release.

Running time: 1:31