Let’s talk about the ugly ones in the room.

“Uglies,” Netflix’s adaptation of Scott Westerfeld’s popular 2005 novel — the first of four books that continued with “Pretties,” “Specials” and “Extras” — centers on conventional notions of beauty and the prejudice of lookism.

In the dystopian world of this film, directed by the director known as McG (the Charlie’s Angels films, Terminator Salvation), everyone is an “ugly one” until they turn 16, when they undergo extreme plastic surgery that transforms them into “pretty ones” inside and out, and all worries disappear. (It’s basically a reverse version of the classic Twilight Zone episode called “The Eye of the Beholder”).

Netflix favorite Joey King (the “Kissing Booth” movies) plays heroine Tally, who is three months away from her “metamorphosis” and counting the days. Chase Stokes is Peris, Tally’s best friend since childhood. Brianne Tju is the plucky Shay, who introduces Tally to the “Rusties,” a group of rebels who have evaded mandatory surgery, live in a community-like setting outside the city limits, and practice their free will. (The dialogue is often painful, but the performances are solid.)

It’s a group that looks good. In fact, the pre-surgery characters are more appealing than the “pretties,” who look like they’ve been dipped in a vat of Instagram filters. That’s the whole point of “Uglies”; it’s not about people who (cruelly) could be described as ugly by conventional perception, but about teenagers who BELIEVE they’re ugly and don’t live up to impossible standards because that’s what they’ve been told their entire lives. (Warning: real-world parallels.) The supposedly hideous people are just fine the way they are, while the “pretties” look like creepy AI beings.

All well and good, but this point is hammered home with little nuance or subtlety. Crammed with visual effects that always look like visual effects, “Uglies” begins with Tally explaining that hundreds of years ago, humans wasted Earth’s natural resources and the planet was mired in war and chaos until scientists invented a renewable energy source as well as the aforementioned “transformation process.”

The ugly ones live in a dark and grey world, while the pretty ones live in a part of town that looks like a Vegas version of Barbieland, where fireworks are constantly shooting into the sky and all the good-looking people party all night long, blissfully unaware that the procedure not only changes their appearance, but also takes away their independence. Basically, they’re a hot, dumb zombie.

When Tally sees that Peris is a shadow of his former self after the operation, she joins the Rusties, but the manipulative and controlling Dr. Cable (Laverne Cox), who is something like the mayor of Pretty City, pushes Tally into the service of a kind of double agent. Between the constant messages about how we as a society place far too much emphasis on appearance and true beauty comes from within, there are serviceable action sequences before the cliffhanger at the end.

Everything about Uglies is average. Not bad enough to be cheesy, not deep or provocative or visually impressive enough to warrant further chapters of the story.