The opening is reasonably suspenseful: in Los Angeles, middle-aged Thomas (Freddie Prinze Jr) is skipping off work on his birthday to spend quality time with his much younger girlfriend Hannah (Gabrielle Haugh), only to find her floating face-down in the pool. Panicked, Thomas shoves her body into a chest – then his wife comes home early. It’s not a bad setup, but it’s almost impossible to work out what The Girl in the Pool is meant to be. Is it a comedy about middle-aged male stupidity, or a naff throwback to 80s thrillers that gave beautiful, emotionally unstable homewreckers what was coming to them?

Providing the movie with its comic undertone is a funny (intentionally, I think) performance from Prinze Jr as dim-bulb Thomas. He’s constantly repeating: “I’m going to fix this.” The evidence suggests otherwise. Take the fact that when he throws Hannah’s body into the chest along with the floats and Lilos, he also tosses in her mobile phone. You don’t have to be a true-crime connoisseur to know the police will have the location tracked in five minutes flat using GPS.

Things get worse when Thomas walks into the garden to discover his wife (Monica Potter) has thrown him a surprise party. Will a party guest discover the body? Who killed Hannah? Was it Thomas? Flashbacks to earlier in the afternoon give glimpses of Hannah – but reveal nothing about her viewpoint. Mostly she walks about in her underwear pulling off classic bunny-boiler moves, like leaving a lipstick kiss on the bathroom mirror for Thomas’s wife to find. Though to be fair, none of the characters have much more depth than a puddle. This is a ridiculous and spectacularly schlocky film – but the fact that it (or at the very least some of the actors) knows it’s silly adds a degree of entertainment.

• The Girl in the Pool is on digital platforms from 20 January.