It’s very rare that a movie ever finds that impossible balance of bad writing, snooze-inducing acting and lackluster storytelling that results in something that truly personifies the word mediocre.

But “IO” accomplishes just that. Have you ever wanted to watch a movie where uninteresting characters talk about something that should be exciting in a way that just sucks the life right out of the whole experience, while somehow simultaneously doing absolutely nothing in the process? Then “IO” is just what you’re looking for.

Now, we have a lot to unpack. So, we could do it right quick or we could spend an obnoxiously long time establishing backstory and setting up a story that never actually happens. I will obviously be picking the first option for this review. But the writers for “IO”? They’ll take the latter choice.

The plot of “IO” is boring. Honestly, that’s enough said. But in earnest, there’s nothing to be excited about here. The Earth has been covered by a noxious gas that humans created with global warming. Now that’s creative writing.

We follow a young woman named Sam (Margaret Qualley) who refuses to leave Earth, and is living in the mountains trying to discover an immunization for the noxious fumes. She has a love interest, but their story is a simple long-distance relationship that amounts to nothing (go figure).

The rest of humanity has flown from Earth to Exodus, a space station orbiting one of Jupiter’s moons, IO, which designed by scientists who knew it was too late to save Earth. Sam’s father decided that Earth could be saved, and kept his family along with others who believed him on the planet.

The entire story is essentially this: Micah (Anthony Mackie), finds the research station Sam lives in, based on a radio message, via hot air balloon (yes, this looks as ridiculous as it sounds) and tries to convince, or rather tells her that she is going with him to Exodus.

That’s the gist of it. Now this doesn’t sound so bad right? A little generic action movie that can be some dumb fun is my kind of movie.

But on a scale of dumb fun to just dumb, this movie falls in a middle zone marked “painfully boring with nothing happening but them standing in a few locations and talking about something I’m sure the director wanted me to care about.”