You could probably tell in a couple of minutes that this weekend’s cinematic sacrificial lamb to the horror gods is based on a video game without being reminded that “Until Dawn” was born on Playstation in the opening credits.

Stock characters stuck in stock situations, weary horror tropes trotted out by the basketful, because a lot of them are needed in a movie whose game-origins are clearly given away by the number of “lives” our pretty young leads have in a story that has them die awfully, only to die and die again unless they can survive in a remote welcome center “Until Dawn.”

Horror is a film genre that doesn’t need fresh excuses to recycle the same wanton slaughter stories, where the director’s only real contribution might be in the “creative” methods of murder — dismemberment, bodies exploding or victims yanked and yanked off camera to face their fate. David F. Sandberg directed “Annabelle: Creation” and the “Shazam” movies but earns no brownie points for originality here.

Five friends Jeeptrip into the boonies for a weekend outing which turns out to be a “retrace the steps” of one member of the crew’s sister’s last days. Melanie (Maia Mitchell) disappeared out here, and we — unlike the quintet — know her fate. We saw her claw her way out of underground imprisonment only to be butchered by her masked captor in the film’s opening scene.

Her sister Clover (Ella Rubin), Clover’s ex Max (Michael Cimino), their pals Megan (Ji-young Yoo) and Nina (Odessa A’zion) are joined by surprise Nina’s latest fling Abe (Belmont Cameli) , who had no idea he was needed because he’s the one with the Jeep Commander and he’s needed to drive them into some morbid remembrance/investigation.

Megan claims to be a psychic, which nicely bookends Abe’s dopey “psyche major” status, with Max showing his brave side because he wants to win back Clover. And none of them let the creepy old guy (“Fargo” and “John Wick” legend Peter Stormare) running the convenience store they stop in scare them off.

“Each year is the same, but different!”

That’s how they end up at the Glore Valley Welcome Center, the very town where “a lot of people go missing.” Because even towns where a lot of people vanish have Chamber of Commerce visitors’ centers.

A “water wall” rainstorm traps them there, where they start to see visions of missing Melanie and a Glore witch and a murderer who appears to keep his porcelin mask on with nails. There’s this baroque clockwork hourglass on the wall, a guest register filled with the same signatures, and a basement with windows covered by the dirt they’re buried in.

Characters start shouting “Oh sh–!” at the bizarre and horrific things they see and experience. And they die off. But not just the once. They do this, in rapid succession, each time they come back to life.

Somebody cracks that yeah, “there are a LOT of movies” with this sort of plot. Nobody notes how similar to a video game it all is — alien, ax murderer, Glore Witch — there’s a cornucopia of carnage and those creating it in store for our fab five.

The characters aren’t sketched in. They’re underscripted outlines for “characters,” which might cut it for a video game, but not for a movie. The multiple deaths and rebirths fatally lower the plot’s stakes, and nobody in the cast makes us feel the terror or the grisly ends that keep happening to them.

This movie doesn’t just play like a video game you’re already tired of. Sandberg and the credited screenwriters never stop reminding us this is more “Sony intellectual property” (Sony owns Playstation and Screen Gems, the film distributor) than a coherent, empathy-engendering, viewer-involved “story.”

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino,
Odessa A’zion,
Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell and Peter Stormare.

Credits: Directed by David F. Sandberg, scripted by Blair Butler and Gary Dauberman, based on the Playstation video game. A Sony/SCreen Gems release.

Running time: 1:43