A grieving husband tries to come to terms with his wife’s death through mentoring from a Dark Web guru in “The Secret Art of Human Flight,” a floundering blend of somber and silly that doesn’t work at either level.

It’s a dull indie with a little-known cast good enough to make the rounds of film festivals, a dramedy that reaches for “twee” and never gets off the ground.

Grant Rosenmeyer is Ben Grady, illustrator of successful self-published children’s books written by and publicized (online) by his wife, Sarah, played by Reina Hardesty of TV’s “Brockmire” and “The Flash,” the very picture of the “beautiful and dead” spouse a movie spends 100 minutes grieving over.

Ben can’t get out of the house, can’t work up the gumption to work and can’t shake the cop (Rosa Arrendondo) investigating his wife’s abrupt and perhaps suspicious death. The fact that Ben’s sister (Lucy DeVito) is dating another cop (Nican Robinson) doesn’t justify this clumsy, off-putting detour added to a sad story that never lets us believe he had a thing to do with that.

Then Ben stumbles into video of someone “flying” without mechanical, chemical or flying suit aid. And that sends him down the rabbit hole of the Dark Web, where an online guru (Paul Raci of “Sound of Metal” and “Sing Sing”) assures him “We all make mistakes, even the Egyptians,” suggests that learning to fly might offer an “out” and sends Ben a hand-written journal called “The Flight Handbook” to coach him through the process.

That process might be a build-up to suicide.

Clues that should leap out at Ben — the guru is weird and not in confidence-inspiring ways, sputtering vaguely mystical self-help gibberish. He asks for $5,300 for his book. And when he shows up, in an aged Winnebago, for “coaching,” we learn his assumed name is “Mealworm.”

Ben’s sister and the friendly cop warn him, the “bad cop” asks about life insurance policies and Dark Web intrigues. And Ben trudges through screwy instructions about ways to “clear your space” (unload all your possessions, repaint your house, and add cotton “clouds”) and “clear your mind” and practice, you know, jumping.

“Lose 18 pounds, no more, no less. Eat only vegetables one week, eat only meat the next.”

There is a point in every movie, especially the lightweight and problematic ones, where the viewer or critic, festival-goer or streaming buyer, decides whether to engage with the subject and the movie’s treatment of it and invest in the story it’s telling. Charitably put, “The Secret Art of Human Flight” didn’t make that sale for me.

The whimsical eccentricity of Mealworm’s life-coaching never elicited so much as a grin. And the plight of our hero never feels as sad as we’d expect, even comically sad. Rosenmeyer, one of the lesser “Royal Tenenbaums” and a lead in the indie remake “Come As You Are,” makes Ben so uncharismatic and uninteresting that he doesn’t generate the sympathy and empathy, amusing or otherwise, required to make one engage with the character.

And director H.P. Mendoza (“I Am A Ghost”) can’t find a work-around in “American Ninja Warrior” veteran Jesse Orenshein’s stumbling script that will allow “Secret Art” to get off the ground, or even out of its own way.

Rating: unrated, suicide subject matter

Cast: Grant Rosenmeyer, Reina Hardesty, Paul Raci, Lucy DeVito, Rosa Arrendondo, Nican Robinson and Maggie Grace.

Credits: Directed by H.P. Mendoza, scripted by Jesse Orenshein. A Level 33 Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:45