Characters have a blase, matter-of-fact acceptance of the central premise of the horror video game turned film “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” that a threadbare animatronic band of characters from a long-closed pizza joint have supernaturally come to life.

You can see it in the unanimated wooden delivery of Josh Hutcherson as his character announces this discovery, the flat matter-of-fact way “Mike” lies about a fellow character coming to the same conclusion.

“I saw your eyes,” he says to Officer Vancessa (Elizabeth Lail), almost dozing off as he speaks. “You were terrified.”

The crimes associated with these mothballed machines are bland and perfunctory, the direction dull and the script inept in the extreme.

It’s an adaptation that fails in the most matter-of-fact ways, a horror movie that doesn’t frighten, a script that feels like an idea Stephen King tossed in the fire, a cast that underwhelms and a story that forgets where it’s going, where it’s been and every detour that’s trotted out to distract us.

Emma Tammi’s kiddie horror film — she did “The Wind” a few years back — tries to tell the “story” of this video game in cinematic terms, and doesn’t come anywhere close to working.

Apparently inspired by ShowBiz Pizza’s “Rock-afire Explosion” 1980s animatronic character band, “Five Nights” is set in a tumbledown Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Palace in BFE, Midwestern America. Freddy’s “was big in the ’80s,” the guy in charge of the property (Matthew Lillard) explains to his new night watchman, Mike (Hutcherson, of “Hunger Games” fame).

Mike is “Mister Doesn’t Work Nights” until the threat of a court date from his aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson, a stand-out in the cast) who wants to take custody of the little sister (Piper Rubio) Mike is raising on his own.

Mike is a would-be parent and a “hero” with “issues.” He sleeps. A lot. He’s haunted by a trauma from his past, the abduction of a younger brother. He is reading a book on “Dream Theory,” and taking sleeping pills to ensure he sleeps so that he might remember that Nebraska pine forest kidnapping, maybe recover a detail that will lead him to this brother’s kidnapper.

No wonder his aunt figures a “criminal endangerment” rescue of little Abby is in order. But Abby isn’t having it.

“She’s mean and she smells of cigarettes.”

That’s why Mike needs this night-watchman job to work out, sleep or no sleep. The quartet of bug-eyed animatronics include a “Fazbear” bear, a dog, a duck and “Foxy.”

One even holds an animatronic eyeballed cupcake. Mike is a bit spooked. And that’s before he sees the creatures, who aren’t nailed to the floor but have the “lithium” battery powered ability to wander about, give him the narrowed-eyes of menace. That’s before he finds blood on their animatronic plush-toy hands.

The script clumsily tries to “explain” Freddy’s crew in electronic and augmented human-costumed terms. It struggles to hide who the villain might be.

And it makes a hash out of the GFPD (Great Falls, Grand Forks?) cop (Lail) who shows up to explain the place’s troubled history, to flirt with Mike, or threaten to shoot him after she’s already tossed his presecription sleeping meds into the river.

Hutcherson has been in good movies, but judging by what we see here, he’s an actor who hasn’t improved on his limited child actor repertoire. It’s not a good role, another kids’ film for him, despite the efforts to make Mike a mental mess, and Hutcherson is just terrible in it. Every non-reaction plays false.

I hate singling out actors because bad movies are rarely their fault, but Hutcherson’s performance is right at home in this stuffed dog of a thriller.

They shoved seven obscure-to-anyone-over-20 youtubers into bit (or costumed) parts to ensure the picture would have a social media footprint, even if the plot and acting weren’t all there.

Every now and then, you get the sense that Tammi and the other writers figured that making this laughable might be the safest route to take. Not that any of the five folks credited with cooking up the game and trying to turn a “story” idea into a script shows any flair for comedy.

About the only laughs here are unintentional ones, as in “These fools thought that would be funny.” It never is.

Rating: PG-13, graphic, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Elizzabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson and Matthew Lillard.

Credits: Directed by Emma Tammi, scripted by Scott Cawthon, Emma Tammi and Seth Cuddeback, based on the video game by Scott Cawthon. A Blumhouse/Universal release.

Running time: 1:50