“What We Hide” is an engaging but unsurprising melodrama about a broken family and one teen daughter’s desperate, extralegal efforts to salvage what’s left.

Their addict mother has died. And rather than “let them separate us,” teen Spider (Mckenna Grace) convinces 10-year-old Jessie (Jojo Regina) to help her stuff Mom in a box in the barn and keep Child Welfare, the sheriff, mom’s dealer and others in the dark and at bay.

Writer-director Dan Kay’s second feature (he did “Way Off Broadway” 25 years ago) doesn’t score any points on originality. Every element in this plot has been introduced to many similar stories and fully explored. But the players hold it together even as it passes by one familiar waypoint after another.

Way down south in rural America’s Addiction Belt (Plant City, Florida), Jayce has overdosed one time too many. Pragmatic Spider gets Jessie to help deal with the body. And none of that “Shouldn’t we SAY something?” over the corpse sentimentality, either. Spider has no time for it, and no use for sugar-coating what their mother put them through.

What she’s about to put them through will be a bigger test.

“I’ll die before I let anybody break us up,” Spider vows.

There’s an overbooked social worker (Tamara Austin) who makes unscheduled visits. Spider’s bestie (Malia Baker) is the daughter of Sheriff Ben (Jesse Williams).

And then there’s Reese (Dacre Montgomery), their mother’s sometime beau and regular supplier. He’s thuggish and cunning, so fooling him and keeping him at bay will be their biggest threat.

The sisters struggle to keep up appearances, hiding mom’s car, keeping her phone active even if they don’t answer calls. Spider’s been running the household for a while. She knows when the food assistance card is renewed and how much they have to spend. Not that she makes the most pragmatic decisions when it comes to junk food binges.

Spider takes inspiration from a book she’s reading at school — “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Isn’t that on DeSantis’ banned-books list?

And she tries to keep her distance from that cute 17 year-old market clerk Cody (Forrest Goodluck) and budding photographer at arm’s length.

“What We Hide” is waiting game cinema, because we know this house of cards cannot stand.

Grace, of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” is the anchor of this narrative. She takes a stock character and makes her real enough to invest in.

Regina (“Where the Crawdads Sing”) does a decent job of depicting a 10-year-old who’s going to have to grow up too fast. “Stranger Things” star Montgomery makes a fearsome villain and Goodluck keeps Cody clear of coming off as a creepy stalker.

But the story’s drug abuse subtext and profanity provide what little edge it manages. At this stage, it’s only mildly interesting to see how a young teen cooks, how she might budget their limited cash (a pawn shop isn’t much help) and fend off a drug dealer capable of pretty much anything.

Spider’s problem solving is teen-accurate, but a tad familiar and always too-convenient. She stumbles into a document forger, for instance.

And not naming the setting robs the picture of the edge calling out the rampant rural Florida drug problem (overdoses everywhere, a sheriff not much on prevention) that Kay depicts.

So “What We Hide” is no “Winter’s Bone. But this isn’t a bad effort at capturing how the drug crisis impacts its youngest victims. It’s simply an unsurprising one.

Rating: drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Mckenna Grace, Jojo Regina, Forrest Goodluck, Dacre Montgomery and Jesse Williams

Credits: Scripted and directed by Dan Kay. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:43