Short but slow, occasionally chilling but never quite scary, “Night Shift” is a straight-up genre thriller that embraces that most ancient and hallowed of horror tropes, “A lone woman menaced in the dark of night.”

Poor pacing dooms this debut feature from siblings who bill themselves as The China Brothers. But they lean into formula, found a few good players and reach for the usual twists in the usual places and manage to lift it above “Well, I’ve seen worse” status.

Phoebe Tonkin, an Australian beauty who achieved top ten billing in the Oscar nominated “Babylon” a couple of years back, stars as Gwen, who has moved to a new town in the desert Southwest and needs a job that pays in cash.

The All Tucked-Inn seems to fill that bill. Owner Miles (Lamourne Morris) does it all there, and could use a break from this family-passed-down business.

“I know it looks as if the damned Addams Family lived here,” he says of the motel gone to seed. But it’s remote and quiet.

Gwen, daughter of a hotel maid, accepts the gig and shows him how to do a “French fold” with the bedsheets, and he’s off.

The motel has a customer, sassy Alice (Madison Hu). And then a couple of tipsy, tuxedo-and-evening-wear swells (Lauren Bowles and Patrick Fischler) check-in just as rudely as they can manage. But their not-shocking-at-all leather pecadilloes aren’t even in the top ten of the weirdest things facing our Gwen, whose hair droops over one eye in every scene where she has a say about it.

She’s all alone as darkness sets in. Gwen has a “history,” of course. That creepy sinkhole in the pool? Nothing to fret over. The half-price discount on “Cabin 13?” That’s just due to customers’ “superstition.” And the desk calls that come from that empty room, the bloodied walking corpse she keeps seeing in the shadows, standing behind her as she answers those chilling calls from no one? Don’t give her a second thought.

“It’s for you,” the ghost purrs.

Benjamin and Paul China take their sweet time setting all this up. A lot of sweet time. When the frights and jolts come, they barely move the needle. This thriller doesn’t hurtle at us, it sleepwalks by as we’re meant to be embraced by its spell.

Frankly, it’s too generic to manage that. A couple of performances pop, but the foreshadowing is so obvious we know almost every thing to expect, and when to expect it.

The third act is properly pitiless, as they often are in such pictures. But there’s nothing and no one to invest in — not the swingers, not run-away Alice, and not Gwen with the hair draped coquettishly over her right eye in too many scenes to count.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sexual material, profanity

Cast: Phoebe Tonkin, Lamourne Morris, Madison Hu, Patrick Fischler, Lauren Bowles and Christopher Dehham.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Benjamin China and Paul China. A Quiver release.

Running time: 1:21