How I Meta'd Your Mother

THE FINAL GIRLS (C+) - This spoof of horror films tries to subvert not only the original genre but the recent era of ironic horror-film spoofs. It's an interesting idea, but the filmmakers don't really pull it off in the end, instead descending into some of the same cliches up for ribbing.

With newcomers penning the script (M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller), a journeyman comedy director (Todd Strauss-Schulson) behind the camera and a shaky cast in front of it, "Final Girls" is a fun idea in search of solid execution. It's often difficult to tell whether some of the corniness is intentional. Keeping the audience off-balance is admirable, but this team fumbles a sophisticated concept.

Here it is: High schooler Max's mom dies. The mom was a struggling actress famous for starring in a pair of cult-classic horror films from the '80s ("Camp Bloodbath") that traffic in all the cliches spawned by "Halloween" and its successors. While attending a retro screening of "Camp Bloodbath," Max and her friends flee the fiery theater through the cinema's screen. They end up sucked into the celluloid and trapped in the original film, where Max gets to bond again with a young version of her mom while trying to outwit the machete-wielding killer. (The goal is to survive along with the film's "final girl," i.e., the last surviving character in every slasher film who finally slays the killer.) It's a movie within a movie within a movie. Sort of.

Taisa Farmiga (as Max) leads a cast from the B-list, each of whom calls to mind a more well-known actor. Mom is played by Malin Akerman ("The Heartbreak Kid"), a poor man's Cameron Diaz. The hunky love interest could have been a Hemsworth. The horny guy in the original "Camp Bloodbath" seems to be doing a Jack Black imitation. Of course, Farmiga herself is a poor man's Vera Farmiga (her older sister). The only refreshing turn here comes from Angela Trimbur, who sports a perfect Pat Benatar-inspired look as the horny gal in the cult film, the prototypical you-fuck-you-die hottie in the bikini top and short shorts. Thomas Middleditch (HBO's "Silicon Valley") could be channeling any of the men on "Friends" as the obnoxious fanboy grooving on the chance to dive inside his favorite bad movie.

The bittersweet opportunity for Max to get a second chance to bond with her mother (albeit with her mom acting as "Nancy," the naive virgin fated to pay the ultimate price for abandoning her chastity) morphs awkwardly throughout the film. At times, it's hard to tell whether the filmmakers are also trying to spoof an "Afterschool Special" or are going for genuine pathos. (Farmiga is not a convincing crier -- but is that supposed to be intentionally obvious?) Are the filmmakers expertly mixing genres and exploiting time warps, or are they merely in over their heads and struggling to have it all make sense? They unconvincingly de-age Ackerman (who is 37) so that she's believable as a teenager from the '80s; but is that a wink at the Hollywood convention of casting 30-year-olds as teenagers in slasher films?

Interest wanes when the story continually turns back on itself. The actors don't have the chops to either milk this as broad farce or find a fresh way to plumb the depths of this meta experiment. It's an interesting swing-and-a-miss.