Cheesy old low-budget horror and science-fiction movies were filled with provocative ideas about identity, society, sexuality, God and other concepts, but they typically buried these themes beneath fright wigs, fake fangs and the rubber hides of monster suits. “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” (1957) really was a “challenging drama of today’s teenage violence,” but that slogan was reserved for a prestige picture, “Rebel Without a Cause.” Meanwhile, the Teen Wolf B-chiller was promoted with a poster showcasing a clawed hand and a curvy girl in a leotard.

Oh, for the days of the drive-in. In synopsis (and with its awkward New Age title replaced by something more exploitable), “I Origins” might sound like a nifty little chiller, like something Peter Cushing might have made for Hammer Films. In brief, it’s the story of a scientist trying to grow a new type of eye in his laboratory, to prove the theory of evolution. But what develops inside this Petri dish is an arty, pretentious and fatally self-conscious piece of work — the most wearying example to date of a relatively new subgenre we might label “Sundance Science Fiction,” notable for such thoughtful indie films as “Primer,” “Another Earth,” “Sound of My Voice,” “The Signal,” “Safety Not Guaranteed” and “Upstream Color”: micro-budgeted movies that translated some of the thorny themes of literary science-fiction into cinematic terms.

“I Origins” reunites the “Another Earth” team of writer-director Mike Cahill and actress Brit Marling, the striking blond “It Girl” (or should that be “It Came from Outer Space Girl”?) of this subgenre (she also starred in “Sound of My Voice”). Here, Marling is a supporting character; she plays Karen, the new lab partner of the story’s hero, ambitious Ian Gray (Michael Pitt, the ill-fated Jimmy Darmody of “Boardwalk Empire”).

A mumbly hipster of a molecular biologist (he likes cigarettes and geek-chic bow ties), Ian wants to demonstrate that eyes have evolved to prove Darwin’s theory and to “disprove God.” This is a contrived and shaky bit of motivation that fits Cahill’s themes and programmatic plotting but is utterly unconvincing; it’s hard to believe any scientist would be naive enough to think a single piece of evidence would persuade creationists to abandon their fundamentalist views.

Ian opens the film with first-person narration: “I’d like to tell you the story of the eyes that changed my world,” he says. (The voice-over is redundant enough to suggest it was added in postproduction, a suspicion reinforced by the fact that it eventually disappears.) Those eyes belong to Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), a model from Argentina by way of Paris who first appears as a mystery woman in S&M drag at a Halloween party. Ian is a rationalist, but the spiritual Sofi believes in “past lives” and the symbolic significance of white peacocks; Ian says the only thing a white peacock symbolizes is a lack of melanin.

When Sofi visits her boyfriend’s lab, where Ian and Karen are trying to “build an eye from scratch,” she becomes pouty. (Apparently, this peacock fan didn’t realize biologists work with animal species.) “We’re not torturing worms; we’re modifying an organism,” Ian insists. “I think it’s dangerous to play God,” counters Sofi. The heavy-handed vintage rejoinder (see “The Invisible Man,” 1933) lands with a thud.

The character dynamics are altered drastically by an unexpected event that essentially splits the movie (among other things) in two. The second half of the film pushes toward the type of reassuring “spiritual” speculation that would not be out of place in a “serious” Robin Williams movie, complete with a finale slathered in emotion-prodding soundtrack shellac courtesy of Radiohead.

“Maybe the eye really is the window to the soul,” Karen suggests. If that’s the case, the soul won’t get much nourishment from “I Origins.” Cahill finds an occasional moment of grace (elevated train tracks, shrouded in morning mist), but this movie about eyes, frequently shot with what appears to be available light, is mostly dim and unattractive.

‘I Origins’

Rated R for nudity, profanity and sexual content. 107 minutes.

Exclusively at the Malco Studio on the Square.

“I Origins” is playing exclusively at the Malco Studio on the Square