"Beneath the Darkness," Starring Dennis Quaid Someone involved with "Beneath the Darkness" has either watched too many horror movies or not enough. There is not an original thought in this story, written by Bruce Wilkinson, or in the way it is directed by Martin Guigui. That makes for few genuine scares and, by the end, some unintended laughter as the proceedings grow too silly to bear. Dennis Quaid plays Vaughn Ely, an undertaker in a small Texas town whose wife has recently died. When four teenagers (Tony Oller, Aimee Teegarden, Devon Werkheiser and Stephen Lunsford) go snooping around his house at night, they of course get what pranking teenagers everywhere get: more than they bargained for. Had any of these kids seen "Psycho," what they find wouldn't surprise them. The script also makes use of the old buried-alive gimmick, and Mr. Quaid's efforts to enliven the tale draw heavily on Jack Nicholson in "The Shining." It's hard to imagine that no one involved recognized how recycled all of this feels, but if this film was intended as a homage along the lines of "Scream," someone forgot to bring the wit. "Beneath the Darkness" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has strong language and occasional gore.