Zac Efron in a scene from “Firestarter”

I can only hope that this is the worst movie I will see this year.

It may be hard to adapt any Stephen King story, but this second attempt at bringing the 1980 novel “Firestarter” fails to ignite. With a sloppy, lazy script, performances that seem to have been shot while the cast was half-asleep and general lackadaisical direction, the new version tries so hard to recapture elements of nostalgia while giving it its own original spin but ends up as one giant snooze-fest.

The film strikes up with parents Andy and Vicky (Zac Efron and Sydney Lemmon) as they try to help their daughter, Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), navigate new feelings she’s getting, alluding to the changes she’s been experiencing with her pyrotechnic abilities, especially when she becomes angry. And you wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.

We then find out through a montage over the opening credits that both Andy and Vicky were test subjects for a study with a hallucinogen called Lot-6 back in college when they acquired their own telekinetic abilities, which they then passed on to Charlie.

Both Andy and Vicky have been on the run from the lab that was in charge of the study, fearing they would take their daughter away, but with Charlie’s increasing abilities, it’s getting harder to hide.

When Charlie has an episode at school (and consequently with her mom), the heat is on and the director of the DSI lab, Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben) calls in a hired gun named Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) to collect her. Rainbird is another former test subject with telekinesis, and when he arrives at the family’s home, he kills Vicky and tries to take Charlie, but she and Andy manage to escape. However, it’s hard to remain secret and safe with her powers only growing and her anger rising.

With all the charisma of someone who’s taken a dose of NyQuil, the cast limps along with the uninteresting and exposition-laden script, and all seem like they couldn’t care less about the end result.

Armstrong channels her inner Drew Barrymore, who played the part of Charlie in the first film, but never makes the character her own. Instead, her performance is relegated to the creepy looks of a murderer, without the fire in her belly to make the role or the film worthy of staying awake through.

Efron and Lemmon feel mismatched and don’t have the chemistry needed to make Vicky’s death anything more than a plot point. As for the rest of Efron’s performance, he, too, lacks anything deeper than just being a stressed-out dad who doesn’t know how to connect with his daughter — until all of a sudden, he does, without any kind of emotional growth or realization.

The film is shot in a way that evokes some kind of grainy-yellowish film tint, giving it that vintage vibe along with the ‘80s synth-heavy score courtesy of Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter and Daniel A Davies.

Director Keith Thomas has taken a script adapted by Scott Teems and seems to rush his way through emotionally impactful moments for the sake of keeping up the pace. Not that lingering would have helped, as Teems’ script glosses over what could have been a compelling, family-powered horror/drama, which film and even TV shows have done much better in recent years. Instead, it dilutes any emotions and wastes perfectly fine actors by not giving them anything to work with or through.

One of the biggest issues is that, for a horror movie, “Firestarter” is just not scary (and this is coming from someone who scares very easily). What might be the “scariest” moments come from the gore that the film likes to focus on every now and again when Charlie decides to torch something or someone. But the effects are hokey and not stomach-churning the way good body-horror can be.

There is no built-up tension or thrilling lump-in-your-throat moments. Instead, “Firestarter” smolders along, never able to spark any originality to make the audience care.

“Firestarter”

94 minutes

Rated R for violent content

½ star