There are a few narrative blueprints that I find just about impossible to resist. For example, if a movie gives me a giant monster stomping through a city, a mysterious creature stalking a bunch of unsuspecting victims, or a malevolent spirit terrorizing an innocent family, I’m game. I’ll almost always give these films a shot, so when I first heard about Sirona, it immediately caught my eye. It follows another story template I find utterly fascinating, and I just had to check this movie out.

Sirona was written and directed by Wesley Clark, and it stars Ashlynn Hideman, Jeremy Calcote, Ben Johnson, Shale LePage, and Sarah Klaren. In the film, a mysterious organization called Valkyrie performs experiments on people and gives them superpowers, and one day, two of its test subjects, a brother-sister pair named Damien and Sirona, escape. Fittingly, these siblings’ abilities are mirror images of each other. Damien can kill people by touching them, and when Sirona touches someone, she heals them.

During the siblings’ breakout, Damien is killed, so Sirona is forced to set out into the world by herself. Soon afterward, a mercenary team is contracted by Valkyrie to capture the girl and bring her back to them, but when the mercenaries find her, they begin to have second thoughts. They’re torn between doing their job and doing the right thing, and that tension ends up having some deadly consequences.

Right off the bat, I have to let you know that Sirona isn’t strictly a horror movie. It’s more of a sci-fi action film, so don’t expect any real scares. However, it does feature a moral dilemma that’s typical of horror movies. In fact, it reminded me a lot of Guillermo del Toro’s films. Granted, it doesn’t feature the horrific and grotesque creatures he’s known for, but it deals with a lot of the same themes his work normally tackles.

See, some of the mercenaries hired to capture Sirona think her superpowers make her a monster, but others disagree, and that’s the central question that drives this movie. Is someone a monster simply because they’re different from everyone else, or are the real monsters the people who treat others as less than human just because they’re different?

I don’t know about you, but I find that motif utterly fascinating. It’s what interested me about Sirona in the first place, and unsurprisingly, I thought it ended up being the best thing about the film. Not only does the story handle that question well in general, but the movie also adds a cool little twist that raises the stakes and makes you question what the right thing to do really is. I don’t want to spoil anything, but suffice it to say, it makes this a genuine ethical conundrum, so the film is a bit more challenging than these kinds of movies typically are.

All that being said, interesting ideas and engaging ethical questions can only get you so far. For a film to really be good, the execution has to live up to the premise, and regrettably, that’s where Sirona falls flat.

For starters, almost all of the acting in this film is subpar. Aside from Ashlynn Hideman, the actress who plays the title character, nobody in this cast is believable. Granted, they’re not all terrible all the time, but on the whole, they feel more like actors reading lines than real people going through real experiences.

Like I said, the only bright spot here is Ashlynn Hideman, but unfortunately, she doesn’t get enough to do. For most of the movie’s runtime, her character feels more like a MacGuffin than a person, so Hideman just doesn’t get much of a chance to shine.

On top of that, I also had a tough time with a lot of the dialogue in Sirona. To take just one example, there are a few scenes where the mercenaries talk about their poor performance in training exercises, and rather than try to figure out how they can improve, they brush it off as unimportant because it’s only an exercise.

Now, on a general level, I get why some people might think that way. At the end of the day, all that really matters is how we perform when it counts, so it’s easy to dismiss practice exercises as unimportant distractions. However, when you’re training for a life-or-death job, it’s a whole different ball game. If you can’t perform well during practice, you’re probably not going to live very long. But for some reason, the mercenaries in Sirona don’t seem to realize that. They just brush off the results of their training exercises as completely unimportant, and I simply didn’t buy that.

Last but not least, I also had an issue with the action in this film. At its best, it’s just decent, and at its worst, it’s as bad as the dialogue. For instance, there are a couple of moments when the mercenaries seem to forget how to use their guns, and there’s even one scene that feels like it’s modeled on the stormtroopers in Star Wars. It involves a bunch of soldiers shooting at people who are right in front of them, and somehow, they all miss.

So at the end of the day, I’m sad to say that Sirona simply doesn’t live up to its potential. On a conceptual level, there’s a lot in this story that could’ve made for an amazing movie, but unfortunately, the execution simply falls short. The poor acting, weak dialogue, and mediocre-at-best action keep this film from being as good as it should’ve been, so if you’re looking for a fun new movie to watch, I’m sad to say that you’re probably better off skipping this one and checking out something else instead.

Sirona was released on VOD on September 5.