Zoë Kravitz makes her feature film directorial debut with “Blink Twice”, a movie built upon a few interesting ideas but without enough original ones of its own. What is intended to be a firm statement of gender dynamics and empowerment ends up being a hollow and borderline exploitative exercise that’s nowhere near the clever and insightful social satire it aims to be. That’s a shame because Kravitz clearly knows how to handle a camera.

“Blink Twice” stars Kravitz’s fiancée Channing Tatum. He plays a disgraced billionaire tech mogul named Slater King who just recently stepped down as CEO of his company King-Tech following some unspecified inappropriate conduct. Since then, Slater has made numerous public apologies, sought therapy, and bought his own island where he can retreat and reflect. Yea, right.

Frida (Naomi Ackie) is a designer nail artist and part-time waitress who happens to be working tables at a charity event sponsored by Slater King. She and her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) smuggle in two cocktail dresses and sneak into the gala as guests. While there, Frida bumps into to the hunky Slater and the two hit it off. It prompts Slater to invite Frida and Jess to join him and his privileged friends on a getaway to his private island. Of course they agree and soon are whisked away on a King-Tech private jet.

One scene later and we’re at Slater’s palatial island estate where Frida and Jess are joined by his pals Vic (Christian Slater), Cody (Simon Rex), Tom (Haley Joel Osment) and Lucas (Levon Hawke) along with three other female guests, Sarah (Adria Arjona), Camilla (Liz Caribel), and Heather (Trew Mullen). It’s a dream vacation, but we realize it’s too good to be true (something that should have been obvious to our protagonists the second Geena Davis pops up to collect everyone’s cell phones).

From there, measuring time is impossible as Kravitz moves us through one day of alcohol and drug-driven revelry after another. Meanwhile her story (which she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum) has a hard time nailing down its tone. The movie seems to have as much fun filming the hard-partying scenes as the characters do partaking. There are sudden bursts of comedy and we get several head-bobbing needle drops. But it also wants us to feel uneasy, especially once Frida starts noticing strange things that she can’t quite figure out.

But the movie comes completely unglued in its third act, losing every shred of nuance and devolving into an uber-bloody girl-boss phantasmagoria. That may sound like a fun, go-for-the-jugular finish and it could have been if not for the heavy-handed messaging, some laughably on-the-nose dialogue, and the simple fact that none of the film’s shallow one-dimensional characters earn our investment. Not to mention it adds yet another shift in tone that further distracts from the movie’s thematic intentions.

“Blink Twice” sets itself up nicely, teasing us with a story that mixes Hitchcockian suspense with a little Shyamalan wackiness. But as is often the case, the issues are in the execution. The suspense never reaches a simmer and the wackiness almost feels unintentional. To Kravitz’s credit the film looks great which testifies to her sharp instincts with the camera. But so much remains underdeveloped that the message loses its power, no matter how hard we’re hit over the head with it. “Blink Twice” is in theaters now.

VERDICT – 2 STARS