Imagine Time Bandits confined to a boring Berkshire village and drained of colour, and you can see why this pig’s ear of Susan Cooper’s well-received children’s story went belly-up at the US box office.

In it, the American Stanton family have moved to England so that Dad can teach physics. Had his field been genetics, he might question why his youngest son Will (Alexander Ludwig) looks absolutely nothing like his five other kids.

But Will is special, as he discovers on his 14th birthday. Following a weird trip to the shopping centre, he is enlightened by local eccentric Lady Greythorne (Frances Conroy) and her valet Merriman (McShane).

They are ‘The Old Ones’, time-travelling peacekeepers who keep evil at bay, and Will is the last of their kind. After hearing Merriman blather on about destiny, seventh sons of seventh sons and the age-old battle twixt light and dark, Will joins their cause.

He is ‘The Seeker’, blessed with telekinetic powers and duty-bound to collect six cosmically important signs strewn through various points in time. But woe betide everyone if the trinkets fall into the clutches of his royal darkness The Rider (Eccleston) first.

Thus ensues a dull trundle through a few feeble time-hops and family ‘revelations’, but by the time the adventure gets going, it’s finished.

McShane’s grizzled presence and the stormy climax save it from being a total wash-out, but other than a twist involving the yummy schoolgirl of Will’s dreams (25-year-old Amelia Warner) there is by way of interest or invention.

Eccleston’s Mancunian horseman of the apocalypse doesn’t help. “My power is increasing by the day!” he snarls. But aside from rearing up on his steed at every verse-end, summoning up a few mangy crows and polluting the place with clouds of soot, he’s about as fearsome as Frankie Dettori on a donkey.

At one point, he even sends his poor, grey-haired old mum to do his dirty work. So let the dark rise. It’ll wish it had stayed in bed.

Elliott Noble