The idea that our reality isn’t actually real isn’t a new one. Ancient Greek philosophers, Indian and Chinese thinkers, René Descartes, Philip K. Dick, and, most recently, philosopher Nick Bostrom (who popularized the chilling computer simulation theory) have all come up with various ideas for what our universe is. Is what’s happening around us really happening? Are we dreaming? Am I the only person who is actually real, and are all the rest of you just products of my subconscious like the projections in Inception? Searching for evidence one way or the other is a potent thought exercise, one that Bliss, the latest movie from writer-director Mike Cahill, utterly wastes.

Bliss, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime, begins by introducing Greg (played by Owen Wilson), a plodding office worker who sketches his daydreams about a “dream house” perched at the edge of a Mediterranean marina. He works at an Office Space-y “Technical Difficulties” department where every employee is obliged to begin every interaction with “I’m sorry,” and he is fired due to low productivity. He’s soon taken in by free spirit Isabel (Salma Hayek), who convinces him that they’re the only people who are “real” and that they’re actually living in a simulation. They engage in a few chemistry-less roller rink montages and then go off in search of a drug that will, Isabel says, bring them back to the real world.Both Wilson and Hayek are quite good-but that’s to be expected, they’re good actors. Hayek is, unfortunately, trapped somewhere between homeless Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Hot and Smart Lady Scientist, but that’s mostly the fault of the script, which zooms both characters around alternate worlds so erratically it never gives them a few moments to develop some believable connection to each other.

There’s a payoff to all of this, but it’s just not interesting enough to warrant nearly two hours of Greg and Isabel trudging through aspiringly metaphysical discussions about the nature of existence that are simply nothing new, even with the perplexing additions of Bill Nye (yes, the Science Guy) and film critic philosopher extraordinaire Slavoj Žižek. Writer-director Cahill, of speculative fiction oddities like 2011’s Another Earth (which tricks you into thinking it’s deeper than it is) and I Origins (which doesn’t even do that), has again created something that wants badly to convince you it’s smart, without actually giving any reason to think that.

There is a good movie buried deep beneath the layers of simulated worlds in Bliss, after a second-act twist that indeed exposes the film’s reality for a fraud. The movie does ponder a genuinely interesting question: Are our lives really bettered by the knowledge that they are worse in other realities? What would it do to someone’s brain if they found that out? What would you give up to live in one or the other? According to theory, there is indeed a universe out there in which Bliss is a good movie-but it’s not this one.Need help finding something to watch? Sign up here for our weekly Streamail newsletter to get streaming recommendations delivered straight to your inbox.

Emma Stefansky is a staff entertainment writer at Thrillist. Follow her on Twitter @stefabsky.