It’s no secret that trauma has long-lasting effects on those who experience it. Some try to ignore. Some find ways to overcome it. Others become completely consumed by it. The themes of trauma, PTSD, and child abuse make up the core of Adam Marino’s directorial debut, Beneath the Leaves.

The film (written by Naman Barsoom, Daniel Wallner, and Mark Andrew Wilson) follows Detectives Erica Shotwell (Mira Sorvino) and Brian Larson (Kristoffer Polaha) as they track down psychopath James Whitely (Doug Jones), who recently escaped from prison and has an affinity for abducting and murdering foster children. There’s an interesting hook here, as the film ruminates on the effects of trauma and PTSD, but the by-the-numbers screenplay and middling direction cause any intrigue created by that hook to dwindle with each passing minute.

One of the high-points of this film is its cold-open. The audience is introduced to a boy and a girl, who suffer horrible abuse at the hands of their foster father and escape by trapping their tormentor inside the house before setting it ablaze. Needless to say, this is effectively uncomfortable stuff. It’s unsettling and icky and establishes a very sinister mood for the rest of the film to make use of. Unfortunately, it is also what makes the rote, uninspired police procedural that follows so bitterly disappointing.

To their credit, the cast should not be considered at fault for the missteps of this film. Jones is the standout performer here, playing psychopath James Whitely with a level of calm creepiness that sells his delusional outlook on the atrocities he’s committing. Sorvino also does a fine job as Det. Shotwell, a tough cop whose trauma past from a harrowing stint in the military is recounted in an emotional scene. Pohala hits all the expected beats of his cop-too-close-to-the-case character Det. Larson. He spends much of the runtime either brooding or raging, and as repetitive as this sounds, he’s still trying to breathe life into his regrettably trite character. These actors do what they can with the material, and it’s not necessarily their fault that the characters they’re cast as are thinly drawn and generic.

The major problems with this film fall square into the script territory, which makes little effort to differentiate itself from other police procedurals. Is an escaped serial killer on the loose? Well, then it’s no surprise that he has a prior connection to one of the cops trying to catch him. Plot developments such as these are expected, and this script follows every beat of the investigative thriller manual to the letter. Couple with that the fact that the characters are all stock, the dialogue is hackneyed, and the film ends with such an unwarranted cliffhanger that it just screams “sequel bait.” We’ve seen all of this before, and done to much better effect.

Armed with a script that’s so rudimentary, director Adam Marino puts little effort into trying to make something that transcends its crime investigation structure. The film flirts with examining the after-effects of trauma and child abuse in its characters, but Marino puts more energy into treading familiar territory than focusing on the haunted people within it. There’s little suspense here because the film goes in the exact directions we expect. While there are glimmers of what could have been in the previously described haunting opening sequence, but Adam Marino plays it safe here with his direction, and the film suffers because of it.

Overall, Beneath the Leaves is standard crime thriller fare. It’s not an abominable film, but it doesn’t take any risks or try to separate itself from other police procedurals. It begins on such a disturbing note and then plays it safe, which is on some level, the film’s worst crime. Worse even than the fact that it also features a jump-scare-Roomba.