Review: â€˜Get Gone’ stirs familiar horror stew of killers, promiscuity and backwoods weirdos

The title of the horror movie “Get Gone� may be a not-so-subtle attempt to evoke Jordan Peele’s 2017 hit “Get Out,� and the film’s recurring image of a disturbed child in a white mask sure looks a lot like something from Peele’s “Us.� But the actual plot of “Get Gone� has nothing to do with either of those movies. It’s more of a tangled spin on the common scene in nearly every “young folks get slaughtered in the woods� thriller, when a creepy local warns the kids to flee.

In this case, the harbingers of doom — and the source of same — are the Maxwell family, who’ve been living illegally on government land for decades and have gone murderously mad due to tainted water. During the course of “Get Gone,� the Maxwells cross paths with both the authorities who are demanding they move and a collection of internet “hoax-busters� who intend to disprove the rumors of psychotic killers in the area.

In other words, “Get Gone� crams multiple tried-and-true splatter-flick premises into its short running time: from the masked sicko stalking sexually promiscuous 20-somethings to the backwoods weirdos who make life hell for unfortunate outsiders. But the plethora of plot lines just makes the film feel unfocused, not ambitious.

Writer-director Michael Thomas Daniels is working with an accomplished cast here (including the prolific Lin Shaye as the Maxwells’ matriarch). But in a way that just adds to the feeling that this picture’s been cobbled together from secondhand parts. There’s nothing notably new — or especially scary — about any of it.