In theaters

INTO THE BLUE, directed by John Stockwell, written by Matt Johnson, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

“You wanna keep trickin’? Or you wanna start pimpin’?”

These words, spoken with unapologetic verve by the young actress Ashley Scott in the new movie “Into the Blue,” get to the vibe of the picture, which uses a wealth of pseudohip street slang to help it connect, in theory, with its intended audience of teens and twentysomethings.

The thing is, at my screening, whenever Scott and the other actors started talking trash in an effort to keep it real, there was the sense from the low bubble of laughter that laced through the crowd that the audience was having none of it.

The film, a buried-treasure adventure thriller from director John Stockwell (“Blue Crush”), is essentially soft-core porn for the PG-13 set. The movie has more oiled skin and nearly naked bodies than anything in Maxim or Blender, which in comparison look like throwbacks to the Good House Keeping magazines of the 1950s – albeit without the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

Set in the Bahamas, the film stars Paul Walker as Jared Cole, a down-on-his-luck diving instructor seeking bigger things and a brighter future in a better tomorrow with his girlfriend, Sam (Jessica Alba), who works at a local aquarium handling sharks when she’s not warming up Jared’s bed.

Together, Jared and Sam are perfect for each other. Neither especially likes clothing, both are totally into tanning, and they are in love with each other almost to the point of being blind to everything around them. This helps to serve the plot, which thickens with the arrival of Jared’s buddy, Bryce (Scott Caan), a buff lawyer from New York whose trouble-causing trick, Amanda (Scott), looks like heroin chic shot through gauze.

When Bryce and Amanda get the bright idea to smuggle drugs off the sunken plane they find while snorkeling, temptation strikes, love stretches to the breaking point, and good and evil are forced to duke it out in the deep.

Speaking of the deep, “Into the Blue” will remind some of the 1977 thriller “The Deep” – and for good reason. The film’s executive producer is Peter Guber, who produced “The Deep,” which found Jacqueline Bisset, then in her prime, in a story of sunken treasure, deadly eels, and little clinking bottles of drugs busily being vacuumed aboard a bum ship. The movie capitalized on the success of “Jaws,” which came just two years before it, but it worked because real tension was generated within the murk.

It’s the murk that makes these two movies so different. What “The Deep” understood is that the less you see, the more you fear. It’s the idea of what’s there in the not there that keeps you on edge. This is why “Open Water” worked so well. It’s also why audiences responded to “The Blair Witch Project,” which used the dark to its considerable benefit.

“Into the Blue” takes another approach – it assumes that we have no imagination, so it shows us everything. Here, the water is so clear, there’s never any question where the sharks are roaming. They’re all around the beautiful actors, all around the beautiful fish, doing their menacing ballet while corruption and stupidity breeds around them. When they do lash out to take a bite out of crime – as you know they will – there’s no shock involved. Instead, it’s just blood and gore in another underwhelming movie.

Grade: C-

On video and DVD

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, directed by Andrew Douglas, written by Scott Kosar, 89 minutes, rated R.

Ironically, not even flies are attracted to it. This new version of the Amityville tale is exactly what you expect from a modern-day horror film – an assorted bag of assembled cliches, this one with bits of “The Shining,” “In Cold Blood,” “The Exorcist,” “Misery,” and any number of those “Ring” movies tossed in for box office curb appeal.

The film is based on true events. In Long Island in 1974, there was indeed a family, the DeFeos, who were murdered by their eldest son, Ronald Jr., in their Dutch Colonial with the good woodwork and the nice medallions.

A year after the murders, a family, the Lutzes, bought the house at a bargain price only to flee it 28 days later, apparently because ghosts were driving them insane. Their freakout became the inspiration for a book that was released during a time when the culture was still high on hallucinogens, still entranced by the Mansons, still frightened by such horror movie hits as “The Exorcist” and “The Omen.” Possession was a pop culture darling in the ’70s – you could announce at a cocktail party that you were the anti-Christ and people would consume you in earnest banter – and the Lutzes’ tale of real-estate possession capitalized on it.

Now, it’s just another blockbuster wannabe, dusted off and retrofitted for the times.

As George Lutz, Ryan Reynolds looks good behind the ax as he turns on his family – still, he’s no Jack Nicholson or, for that matter, even James Brolin.

As Kathy Lutz, Melissa George shrieks on cue, but in her, you sense more motherly worry than outright terror, which is what the film needs. And as for the demonic flies that made such a chilly addition to the original film? They make a brief, thrill-ride appearance here and then they are gone – not unlike this movie was shortly after its appearance in theaters.

Grade: C-

Visit WeekinRewind.com, the new archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher

@weekinrewind.com.