Endless

Scott Speer’s direction and the script (by Andre Case and Oneil Sharma) assures there are no baddies here. Although it shamelessly nods to the popcorn classic “Ghost,” it doesn’t rely on a culturally vexing villain to score points. This is one of the movie’s charms — and truths.

Whatever variations on a theme this script offers, none of it works without the ache we’re supposed to feel for those torn apart by sudden death. Endless never delivers that.

Even at a slim 95 minutes, Endless grinds on endlessly.

Someone must have said, “... like 'Ghost,' but you know, for teens!” when pitching Endless, Scott Speer’s shameless and embarrassingly vacant rip-off of Jerry Zucker’s wildly successful, otherworldly 1990 romantic drama. But I bet no one in that room expected the outcome to be quite this irritating.

Several people get wrongly accused of being responsible for somebody's death — there's as much undeserved guilt floating around in this picture as in a Fundamentalist kid's puberty years — and all three of our aforementioned protagonists find they have family issues that need working out. All are broadly drawn and unconvincing, like everything else in this pandering supernatural romance.