Take “The River Wild.” Delete river. Insert canyon, and replace Kevin Bacon’s charismatic killer with a hapless guide, played by veteran Will Patton, and a band of starving wolves, and you’d have “The Canyon.”

This week’s one-week wonder at the Kendall Square Cinema is “The Canyon,” an unoriginal, uninspired, unnecessary film.

Newlyweds Lori (the beautiful Yvonne Strahovski of “Chuck”) and Nick (Eion Bailey) Conway have just arrived at a tacky Arizona motel with plans to take the famous mule ride down the Grand Canyon. Problem is: none-too-bright man-candy Nick has failed to get a permit. Enter Henry (Patton, channeling, I believe, Gabby Hayes and Yosemite Sam), muleskinner extraordinaire. In spite of his wife’s protest, Nick entrusts their lives to this bearded, bourbon-soaked cartoon character.

Do Nick and Lori, unlike the demon-beleaguered couple in the terrific, no-budget surprise hit “Paranormal Activity,” get what they deserve? Nick and Lori come across as self-satisfied, arrogant and clueless, making it hard to feel very bad for them when the (inevitable) bad things happen.

Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Richard Harrah and written by novice Steve Allrich, “The Canyon” goes through its borrowed tropes, features some nice cinematography by Nelson Cragg (“CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”) and has enough canned emoting and banal dialogue to fill the Grand Canyon.

Character actor Patton gets the hickory-smoked sausage award for wildly overplaying it, probably to amuse himself.

Rated R. At the Kendall Square Cinema.

(“The Canyon” contains brief disturbing content, and then there’s the rest of the movie.)