The story isn’t wholly original or even new, but it delivers on what it promises. It’s difficult not to be charmed by a cute family-friendly Halloween movie that instills the importance of Halloween while embracing it on a massive scale.

Jeff Wadlow’s film is competent enough to serve as relatively harmless background noise while kids sort candy after a night of trick-or-treating.

Despite a clever premise, decent special effects and an amiable tone, the horror-comedy “The Curse of Bridge Hollow” never makes the jump from “mildly pleasant time-killer” to “entertaining.”

This sweet, silly, tween-friendly Halloween movie has a lot of the expected broad humor and slapstick, but it has a strong center in Marlon Wayans and Priah Ferguson.