The Breach, directed by Rodrigo Gudiño (“The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh”) and written by Ian Weir and Craig Davidson (based on the Audible Original by Nick Cutter) is a Canadian curio that relies on understatement amongst its performers as well as some gorgeous scenery. We open on this scenery as a solitary canoe drifts down a river, surrounded by trees and a stunning sky. As the canoe floats past a family picnicking by the river, we gather from their reactions that there is something unpleasant in that canoe, before the title of the film fills the frame and we launch into a title sequence that takes us through mysterious clouds and lights. These credits are reminiscent of the opening of “Event Horizon” as well as the end of “Wounds,” and that will not be the last recall that Gudiño’s film provides.

Once the object in the canoe is inspected by police chief John Hawkins (Allan Hawco, “Midnight at the Paradise”), the mystery deepens and John sets off to investigate further with his ex-girlfriend Meg Fullbright (Emily Alatalo, “Spare Parts”), who knows the river and forest and hires out boats, and her ex-boyfriend Jacob Redgrave (Wesley French, “Trouble in the Garden”), who is also the local coroner. Thus, the tensions between our central three characters are established, and the film mechanically reminds us of these tensions periodically. This is but the first of a number of unnecessary details in the film that demonstrate overwriting, detracting from the central premise that is itself overly complicated.

Our heroes find a grand old mansion in the woods, which initially seems to be isolated yet also remarkably well-equipped. They understandably ask, “Who builds a place like this in the woods?” and no answer is provided by the film other than “We want to make a scary house movie and cabin in the woods was too clichéd.” Clichés are fine when used well, as both “The Cabin in the Woods” and 2013’s “Evil Dead” demonstrate. However, when the attempts to avoid clichés mean recourse to others, it leads to a deeply unsatisfying experience. The mansion is described as older than it should be, but we do not learn why. The power systems of the house have been repurposed, but we do not understand how. A further family dynamic featuring Linda Parsons (Natalie Brown, “Blood Honey”) is introduced that includes undefined drama and such pet names as Tinkerbell. This family seem to have wandered in from another film, suggesting a lack of faith in the central three. Granted, they are quite dull, the performances perfunctory at best.

Also perfunctory is the over-plotting to explain a rogue scientific experiment — aren’t they all? — which recalls “From Beyond” as well as “The Mist” and even “REC,” but brings none of the atmosphere, menace or drama of any of these. There are some very gory moments with some admittedly creative designs, but the inclusion of gore seems more like compensation for a lack of commitment to the other aspects of the film. Gudiño’s direction is often flat and clumsy, such as fast cuts when John, Meg and Jake discover things that we know are weird because they repeatedly say, “No fucking way.” Worse are the rather feeble action sequences that feature little visual flair and indeed contradict earlier instances. Further contradictions emerge when the isolated aspect of the mansion is removed for reasons best described as plot; suggestions are made of a global conspiracy that is supported by discussion of peanut butter (seriously); the juxtaposition of both scientific and occult tropes adds to the irritating hodgepodge that the film increasingly collapses into.

The Breach is a victim of an affliction found in many horror films, as well as action and, perhaps to a lesser extent, science fiction. When you look at some of the most effective horror films, from “Shivers” to “The Shining” to “Hellraiser” to “Ringu,” as well as modern efforts like “It Follows” and “The Babadook,” they are simple stories creatively told. The Breach, however, is a convoluted assemblage of stories, tropes and clichés, jumbled together with little focus or clarity. We do not get drawn into the character dynamics nor indeed the (admittedly dangerous) situation, because the film expends too much effort on introducing new weird or gruesome things to maintain attention. The end result is an unengaging mess that recalls enough better films that you may well wish you are watching those instead. The unwieldy collection of different elements overwhelm each other, but the viewer is left thoroughly underwhelmed.

The opening sequence of Randall Emmett’s Midnight in the Switchgrass echoes these previous dramas and offers promise. Aerial shots over the evocative landscape of Pensacola, Florida are accompanied by a voiceover from Byron Crawford (Emile Hirsch, “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood”), ruminating on hunters, prey and the shifting position of humans. We then cut to the discovery of a body, and while the opening is clichéd it does offer genre pleasures that raise goodwill in the viewer. This goodwill continues in the following scene, as a long take presents Tracey Lee (Caitlin Carmichael, “Epiphany”) as she emerges from a motel room in a drugged state, making her way through a parking lot en route to further plot developments.

The goodwill is perpetuated by a possible interest in the under-explored and potentially interesting aspect of this type of narrative — the position of the victim. Perhaps Emmett and writer Alan Horsnail will offer more than the disturbing serial killer or the devoted cop. It all looks promising.

The goodwill and promise lasts for about ten minutes. Consequently, telegraphed scene follows telegraphed scene and a set of disparate storylines take off in clumsily stitched together directions. Florida Department of Law Enforcement officer Byron has been investigating a series of murders that he believes are the work of the same killer. He is very devoted, because of course he is. FBI agents Rebecca Lombardi (Megan Fox, “Till Death”) and Karl Helter (Bruce Willis, “Trauma Center,” who might as well have said “Where’s my check?” instead of his dialogue) conduct a sting operation regarding sex trafficking in search of a particular perpetrator. Rebecca is committed to helping women because they could have been her, because of course she is. Karl is, there. And truck driver Peter Hillsborough (Lukas Haas, “First Man”) is the sick bastard that both state and federal law enforcement agencies are looking for. And there’s the Sheriff’s department detective (Michael Beach, “Inheritance”) who goes on about his jurisdiction and wants no involvement from other agencies.

With the goodwill squandered, Midnight in the Switchgrass then takes its viewer thoroughly into the ridiculous. The reveal of Peter as the killer early on is not necessarily a problem, but the film takes the trouble to show that Peter is a loving father and husband, in such a way as to hammer the point again and again that the serial killer “seemed like such a nice, normal person” but is really a monster. Yes, got it. The script lacks the context or world-building to create proper juxtaposition — with Peter established early on as creepy, the film has nowhere to go but into depravity, which needs to be handled with care and precision. Emmett is no David Fincher and the descent (literally) is not so much steady as lurching.

In the other narrative strands, Hirsch’s Byron could have been an interesting protagonist, but Horsnail gives him little to do beyond lamenting to his wife that he does not feel the presence of God, while she complains about the absence of Byron. Willis is barely in the film and seems bored: There is one scene ostensibly between Karl and Rebecca, but Willis is largely out of shot and the speaker actually sounds like someone else, suggesting a reshoot without the principal actor. Fox tries her best but the script denies Rebecca agency, lumping her with a backstory pulled from the file marked “tough girl with daddy issues” and then placing her in a painfully obvious situation.

The treatment of Rebecca highlights a nasty and exploitative strand of misogyny within the film. As mentioned earlier, it could be interesting to explore the victims’ perspective, especially as we see kidnap as well as murder. But the film takes the killer’s perspective, frequently aligning the viewer with Peter and seeming to revel in his cruelty. Despite characters insisting that “she’s so strong” and “these women can do much,” this is still very much a man’s story about how men treat women. Some men treat women well and others treat them badly, but the film as a whole treats them badly. It comes across therefore as cheap and lazy, boring as well as distasteful.

To make matters worse, aside from that promising long take, the film is garishly shot. Leering point-of-view shots, distracting filters and tedious montages seem designed to stretch things out and make the whole experience more turgid, robbing Midnight in the Switchgrass of tension and forward momentum. It is also clumsily edited, with pointless insert shots of the titular switchgrass and some (mercifully brief) action sequences that offer neither a coherent space nor a visceral thrill. Add all this incompetence together and you have a thriller that fails to deliver thrills or atmosphere, while also presenting some depressingly retrograde attitudes.

Willis technically plays Detective Wakes (no first name given) and is the star of the movie, but all things considered his screen time is fairly minimal. The real star is Nicky Whelan (“Knight of Cups”), who plays waitress Madison Taylor. Madison’s the lone caretaker of her teenage sister after their mom has died, and she has an aversion to hospitals. Wouldn’t you know it, sister Emily (Lala Kent, “10 Minutes Gone”) has an asthma attack that, for some reason, requires her to be hospitalized overnight. To clarify, she had the attack because she left her inhaler at home. Maybe the hospital and the kindly doctor (Steve Guttenberg, “Police Academy”) don’t trust her to use the inhaler. It’s not important. What’s important is that she’s stuck in the hospital, overnight, the hospital her sister doesn’t want to be in, what with their mom dying in one and all, so the young Emily has to spend the night alone in a scary environment.

Now, lest we hate too much on Madison, she is an overworked waitress with a heart of gold. Hey, someone has to make money to pay the mortgage and take care of her younger sister. So what a stroke of luck it is when Madison, taking the trash out that night, in the dark, is first accosted by a dying, bleeding man and then shot by a couple of unknown assailants. Whoops! Looks like someone’s going to the hospital after all!

Enter Wakes, who’s annoyed about being pulled into a case after already working a double shift. It seems he’s had an informant stashed away somewhere, and now that informant might be in danger. Off goes Wakes, only to find that his man’s been brutally murdered. When word reaches him about Madison’s shooting, he springs into action . . . by showing up at the hospital to tell her things are going to be all right and to call him Steve. Which, I guess, is his first name? See, Madison now has a bullet in her leg, one that the good doctor doesn’t want to remove until the morning, because of reasons. Wakes wants that bullet so that he can run ballistics on it to see whose gun fired the shot. So he has Madison stashed on a vacant floor in the hospital and posts a guard. Note to Hollywood — hospitals don’t have vacant floors, even if they’re specialty floors and there are no suitable patients.The bad guys quickly realize that the bullet can implicate them directly. So they make it their mission to find Madison and remove the bullet. They make the point, several times, of taking care not to kill her. At first, this doesn’t make sense, since all they need is the bullet, and then it makes even less sense, because then she sees their faces and can identify them. But a Macguffin pops up to prop up the plot, thus dragging out Madison’s fate.

If you think that the idea that Madison’s sister Emily is in the same hospital will figure into the story at some point, you’re right. But just as it takes Bruce Willis forever to show up onscreen and even longer to figure out that Madison’s in danger, it takes a long time before Emily’s presence is weaponized. The bulk of Trauma Center is an uninspiring cats-and-mouse game between the two bad guys and Madison. You’d think it’d be pretty easy for two armed men to find a hobbled young woman, especially since the rest of the hospital has been told to stay away from the isolated patient. But there’s no way this movie could have been expanded to 87 minutes if they’d been able to get at Madison right away, so the plot allows her multiple escapes. During the (long) sequence, Madison shows us all she’s not the timid, weak woman we first were meant to take her for. No, she knows skills like breaking open a locked metal door, using an AED to shock a doorknob, or firing a gun. I suppose we could assume she knew all that stuff before, like she was Angelina Jolie’s character in “Salt,” and that would make more sense than her learning it on the fly, under tremendous stress, and (of course) still bleeding quite profusely.

It wouldn’t be fair to say Willis sleepwalks through this role. It’s as if he thought he was merely auditioning and intentionally tanked it. The worst line readings, the least-believable shambling. Even for a guy who has played seemingly thousands of world-weary cops, this performance has to be just about a career nadir for him. He isn’t asked to do much and can’t manage that. Wakes’ job is to show up late, right about when Madison is really at the end of her rope, and then save the day.

We are well into the only-a-paycheck years for Bruce Willis, who presumably has enough money that he doesn’t need to do this kind of work. But it’s not just that Trauma Center is bad, he’s bad in it, and there’s no excuse for the astonishing lack of effort.

To French-Senegalese director Mati Diop, the ocean is a “holy temple,” a shimmering presence that reflects the economic and social aspirations of people seeking a better life. Repeated shots of ocean waves and brilliant orange sunsets create an eerie mood in her first feature Atlantics, Palme d’Or nominee and winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes. Shot by Claire Mathon and set in Dakar, Senegal, Atlantics focuses on the plight of immigrants who travel from Senegal to Spain, a dangerous and arduous journey that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates has claimed the lives of approximately 19,000 migrants since 2013. The film, however, is not a political screed but a multi-level drama that includes elements of romance, class struggle, a police investigation, as well as horror-fantasy, all combining to create a haunting and poetic experience.

The film begins as a group of young men working on a new construction site in Dakar angrily confront the manager about not being paid for their work. They tell him “Families depend on us!,” but the manager cannot help — the boss is away and there is no money to pay the workers. Central to the film is the relationship between Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), one of the young construction workers, and his 17-year-old girlfriend Ada (Mame Bineta Sane). The two meet near a beach and passionately kiss, promising to talk later in the evening but, by the time Ada arrives at the local bar, she finds that it is filled with women who have been abandoned by their boyfriends who have set sail for Spain.

Souleiman has left with the other men, traveling in a small boat without saying goodbye. Ada, as well, also has hidden the fact that she is already engaged to the wealthy, vacuous Omar (Babacar Sylla), a man she does not love. The arc of Souleiman’s relationship with the young Ada evokes Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” a love that is haunted by beauty but thwarted by destiny. After the men leave, however, unexplained events begin to occur in Dakar — the marriage bed in Omar’s house catches fire the night of his wedding to Ada and Issa (Amadou Mbow), the police detective charged with investigating the fire, is suddenly plagued by a mysterious illness. We also learn that the police force is beholden to the businessman Mr. Ndiaye (Diankou Sembene), who withheld pay from his workers.

It is at this point that the film takes a turn into the occult as the men, presumably drowned at sea, come back to Senegal to possess the bodies of the women they left behind. Appearing as women, they order Ndiaye to pay millions of dollars in money he owes them and to dig graves for those who died. While the introduction of the occult seems out of sync with what has transpired to this point, Diop says that the supernatural is an integral part of the reality and traditions of everyday life in Senegal. According to the director, “Ada comes closer to herself, freer when she starts to notice the men in her town have disappeared and turned into spirits. It’s almost comforting to her that there is another world that creeps out at night. It is a meditation on night.”

While Atlantics calls attention to immigration in West Africa, it is clear that similar dramas are unfolding all over the world. Though there have been many films about the immigrant experience, few have been told from the point of view of the women left behind. For Diop, the story is a means of re-establishing her own African identity. “I found out later,” she says, “that writing this character of Ada was a way to live the African adolescence I didn’t have a chance to live. I lived my adolescence in Paris, in a very white environment — which was fine, but I think that all the episodes, all the periods I didn’t spend in Senegal as a mixed girl, I needed to find it back. I have a very strong link with the character. I invent and create, and it’s really a way for me to live a parallel life.” It is also a way for us to share an intimate connection with the people of Senegal and with all immigrants who never made it to the other shore.

Norman is a deputy in a small Texas town, serving under Sheriff Ed Quinn (Levine, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”). He grew up in the area, went off to join the military, and has returned a quiet and introspective young man. In his past, he was sweet on Frances Campbell (Debnam-Carey, “Friend Request”), whose daddy Tom (Gerald McRaney, “Focus”) owns a big ranch and on whose property which Norman and his brother Ray live, in a trailer. But now, back in his toddlin’ town, Norman isn’t outwardly interested in Frances, who notices the difference and confides in her sister Abbey (Holt, “47 Meters Down”), who’s long had an off-and-on thing with Ray. Ray, a disheveled ne’er-do-well with the fashion sense of an old potato, also has a rather open thing going on with bartender El Camino (Francesca Eastwood, “The Vault”), who kind of wants him all to herself.

Got all that?

One early morning, Abbey and Ray drive out into the woods, pretty much the middle of nowhere. Abbey’s still drunk from the previous night, spent at the local watering hole, and she’s armed with a gun she snagged from her dad’s desk. Abbey wants Ray to teach her how to shoot, and she’s angsty about any number of things. They quarrel (Abbey playfully points the gun at Ray a few times), and after a quick tussle, Ray gets the gun. And then the car hits a pothole, and blam.

I’m telling you all of this not to spoil the movie, but to lay down the setting for the main thrust of the plot. Ray hikes back to a payphone and calls his brother, who’s naturally appalled, but who offers to help his sibling cover up the tragedy, as is standard operating procedure for melodramatic noir films. In this case, Norman’s decision to help is complicated by his relationship to Frances and her father. After the cover-up, in which Norman and Ray lie to the sheriff and to Abbey’s sister and dad, Norman becomes closer to Frances, marrying her in short order. Now, you’d think that Norman, the by-the-book lawman who’s also served his country, would be the one whose moral compass would always point north, the one who might find some everlasting conflict arise from his helping Ray out. But no! In a slight deviation from the aforementioned standard operating procedure, it’s not. Someone else feels such eternal torment that it eats at them endlessly from the inside. Any guess who it may be?

In the previous paragraph, I used such words as “endlessly,” “eternal,” and “everlasting.” And that, unfortunately, is how I would describe A Violent Separation. The plot is a well worn path, and the actors and writer (Michael Arkof) do the audience no favors in terms of creativity. The film presents a dreary tone and is replete with clichés that are common not only to the noir and western genres but really to most other genres as well. Of the cast, only the veterans McRaney and Levine shine; the rest feel like caricatures delivering some bland and blasé line readings. Without the gravitas lent by those two actors, A Violent Separation would have been even more somnambulant. Even so, viewers will likely tire of waiting for something, anything to happen for much of the latter three-quarters of the film.

In an early scene, we see the mother, Kyoko (Saki Miata, “M.A.R.R.A.”), leave her apartment (shared with her daughter and her own mother) in the middle of the night, heading to an abandoned warehouse. Later that evening, she is discovered dead in the warehouse by a night watchman. Not just dead, though — petrified. Detective Stella Murphy (Christine Woods, “Poor Greg Drowning”), just returning to work after a personal leave of absence, is called in to the case and visits the late Kyoko’s mother and child in the apartment. The older woman is reticent about her daughter’s death and offers very little information to the detective; the younger one, Nori (Karen Fukuhara, “Suicide Squad”), is more inquisitive but is ultimately silenced by her well-meaning grandmother. Nori, who has apparently been kept in the apartment by her mother and grandmother without proper schooling or any other outside life, later summons all of her courage and walks downtown to visit Murphy at the police station in an attempt to see her mother’s body.

Even at this point, we in the audience have reason to believe there’s a lot more to this death than meets the eye, and the body-viewing scene enforces this belief. Something supernatural has happened to Kyoko, and it appears that the grandmother knows a heck of a lot more than she’s letting on. In addition to this new, weird case, Murphy has to deal with her new supervisor, her ex-husband Jake (Ross Partridge, “Secret in Their Eyes”), a character straight out of the aforementioned standard police procedural, and plus there’s this mysterious black-leather-clad motorcycle rider following Murphy and Nori all over the place. Oh, did I mention that Nori, orphan (although 18 years old) that she is, is now staying with Murphy? The implication is that this is somehow irregular and frowned upon, but it’s not as if Nori was going to go into the local Child Services system. At any rate, Nori and Murphy both want to know more about Kyoko’s demise, so the former assists the latter — and, certainly, helps her grow as a person in the process.

Now, for the first half or so of Stray, there are these hints of supernatural activity, hints that tantalize the viewer into wanting to know more, to dive deeper into what seems to be a mysterious new world. Endless opportunity for storytelling, you would think. There must be some kind of mystical backstory associated with Nori’s family. What could it be? Herein lies the biggest problem with the movie — this aspect is left largely unexplored. So for that first half, we have a crime story that contains touches of science-fiction and fantasy, but then those touches lead to a whole lot of nothing in the second half of the movie, which instead focuses on finding out the identity of the Man in Black and his connection to Nori’s family. The answer is too straightforward, too normal for the movie. We keep expecting something wondrous, something magical, and we just get more police work. It’s not just disappointing, it’s a real letdown.

So the plot is pretty uneven, and unfortunately so is the dialog. At times I felt bad for the actors, who are given some pretty dopey lines to speak (but none so memorable that I can recite them now). Some of them even made me laugh, and trust me when I say that this is not a comedic movie. But I can’t pin all of the blame on the screenwriters (J.D. Dillard and Alex Theurer), trite and predictable as the story is. The acting is just as uneven. I mean, there are scenes, up-close-and-personal confrontations between characters that are played very well by the participants, and then there are other scenes in which it felt like the actor was just trying to get through the ordeal so they could all go to lunch. That said, the movie’s strength is its female characters and the women behind them, and it’s their performances that save the whole she-band from sliding into an oblivion of obscurity.

Bottom line, unless seeing a major plot angle get presented but not explored is of interest to you, Stray is an interesting movie, but one that teases without pleasing.