I had a dream this movie would be — So different from the shit I’m watching! A dream of a funny yet bloody musical horror comedy. But now that dream is dead, and all that’s left is Stage Fright.

The curtain rises: Minnie Driver plays a Christine Daaé-esque soloist in the middle of a production resembling “Phantom of the Opera.” She returns to the dressing room after the show and to her children before sending them away to reunite with a masked lover. Said lover murders her violently, and then the movie’s title cuts in. Ten years later, the two traumatized, now-teenaged orphans are stuck working in the kitchen at the fringe of the theater world: kiddie-camp summer stock. Camilla (Allie MacDonald) and Buddy (Douglas Smith) have since been taken in by their mother’s producer, Roger McCall (a delightfully exasperated Meat Loaf). Desperate to follow her singing heritage, Camilla auditions for the camp revival of her mother’s infamous play. Nothing about this could possibly go wrong.

Certain elements of camp come across: the musical contains an offensive or insensitive line or three, the Argus Filch looking groundskeeper is hinted as the bad guy multiple times, and the play’s director pits his two leading ladies against each other for his favor on the casting couch. That brand of camp is fun, but with wide-eyed ingénue Camilla at the heart of the story, so much of the silly momentum is lost. MacDonald uses practically the same expression throughout the film, rendering Camilla dull when standing alongside the energetic theater kids. Even Buddy, with his disdain for all things theatrical, is a much more interesting on-screen presence.

The film’s tone is widely erratic, fluctuating between irreverent musical spoof to mean-spirited mocking. Not surprisingly, this discord appears in the music as it attempts to encapsulate its two different genres; why horror must sound like terrible industrial rock, I’ll never understand. Yet the movie has reverence for the slasher movies of yore. The ol’ school mantra of “all sluts must die” is carried on by whispers about Driver’s character carrying several affairs before her murder. After Camilla rebuffs the sleazy director’s advances, the murderer retaliates against him for trying to corrupt her. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre gets a big nod in the movie, and it shouldn’t surprise you that Stage Fright includes a final girl reference. Judging from the painted poster and movie tropes, it looks as if this was headed in for the Friday the 13th or Sleepaway Camp direction. But with so many of the jokes and characters missing their mark, the movie looks to have sloppily injected its references.

To be fair, this is director’s Jerome Sable’s first feature, and as a short, perhaps the film would have come across as much more zany than as drawn out in its present form. Eli Batalion returns as Sable’s collaborator from their previous musical short, “The Legend of Beaver Dam.” I heartily welcome innovative ways to combine blood and high notes, but Stage Fright is not the perfect debut. Consider the campy, low-budget movie Popcorn, which also features a homicidal stranger killing off kids in the middle of a schlock film festival. Both are self-referential, but Popcorn revels in its homage while this film appears disgusted with its musical theater confines.

Ultimately, Stage Fright tries too damn hard to sit with theater kids at lunch but secretly considers them losers. The movie is not very fun to be around for long and barely knows enough of the lingo to be tolerated. To be tolerated is not what I look for in a movie. No, a Mean Girls reference will not save this picture, but maybe a more dynamic lead and a clear sense of direction would suffice. If a horror musical can’t make its audience laugh along with it, then what good is your High School Musical/Sleepaway Camp mashup?

Grade: D