Starring Emma Roberts. Rated PG

“You guys are the dumbest smart kids I’ve ever met,” a mom (played by Juliette Lewis) tells hyperwired gamers in the teched-out, neon-lit new Nerve.

To put another spin on that, this is the smartest dumb movie you’ve ever met. Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman made their name with the online-relationship documentary Catfish. Here they amp things up by cutting seamlessly between on-screen and real worlds, filling the film with frenzied text messages, Spotify downloads, and live cellphone video streams. That clever look meets with a witty script that’s packed with Gen-Z-friendly pop-culture references.

The problem is the way the story stays in such safe, silly territory. Based on the novel of the same name, Nerve could not have been timed better, with Pokémon Go sending millions around the world into a virtual chase—not to mention the rise of everything from Anonymous to Periscope. Here, the new web obsession is a sort of secret Internet-based game of truth or dare, where kids either get paid to play or pay to watch. (“Are you a watcher or a gamer?” the game, Nerve, asks in its giant glowing-pink letters.)

At first, Joost and Schulman present the game as a positive force, with shy, passive Vee (Emma Roberts) finding confidence by putting herself out there. And, initially, Nerve is about innocent fun and fantasy, spanning shopping sprees and anonymous kisses. But when she hooks up with another gamer, Ian (Dave Franco), the dares become more dangerous—and it becomes clear it’s going to be hard to leave the competition. A lot feels familiar here, with an idiotically over-the-top climax that has overtones of The Hunger Games.

What’s irritating about Nerve—as much as it feels progressive and features a savvy, rainbow-nation cast—is how it refuses to play its own truth-or-dare game. It’s never brave enough to delve into the more menacing issues of the dark web, and doesn’t truly dig into the implications of all of your private information being served up on the Internet. It ultimately prefers pranks—and not exactly adrenaline-pumping ones—over probing paranoia. Now back to catching Pokémon.