Now here's something I don't recall having seen before: a film with a trigger warning attached, just before the certification card. This sort of thing has become ubiquitous on TV, especially with respect to archive content, but I suppose that's just the way the world is nowadays, and it's not even a bad thing – certainly preferable to outright censorship (though I note we're seeing some of that as well).

I suppose it says something about the film and its makers: the message I'm getting is that while this may be a violent, gory, disturbing movie, it is all these things in a responsible and serious manner. Well, you can buy that one or buy it not, I would suggest – but it does suggest to me that it won't be too long before any adult-oriented movie released by a big studio will be running this kind of warning; Zoe Kravitz's Blink Twice, (this seems like a fridge title) is just ahead of the pack, or possibly blazing a trail. It feels like the kind of movie that would be well down with this.

Naomi Ackie plays Frida, a marginally successful nail artist and waitress who faces a big night in the latter job – it is the gala evening sponsored by Slater King (Channing Tatum), a tech bro who has successfully managed to rebuild his reputation after some unspecified wrongdoings in the past. Rather naughtily, Frida and her friend Jess switch their waitressing uniforms for gowns and sneak into the gala, pretending to be guests. Despite keeping a low profile being the sensible thing to do, they end up catching the eye of King himself. King reveals that he and his entourage are shortly off for a relaxing break on his private island (which seems to be off the coast of Latin America somewhere) – do the two women fancy joining the group for a free luxury holiday?

Well, of course they do, the pair of them obviously not realising that this sort of thing never ends well in a movie. Off they go to what is indeed a drippingly opulent and lovely resort, to eat the finest food, drink the finest drink, partake of the most refined recreational pharmaceutical compounds, and generally be waited on hand and foot. 'Do you think the human sacrifice will be before or after dinner?' asks Jess, the joke being, of course, that she doesn't know she isn't really joking. Gradually a peculiar sense of wrongness begins to manifest itself, one of history somehow repeating itself, within odd gaps in their memories. Is there something going on here?

Of course there is. There are lots of good things to say about Blink Twice: Zoe Kravitz shows real talent and verve as a director, the film's first half is extremely well pitched, and there are some strong performances from a cast of faces both new (Adria Arjoa is Ackie's rival for Tatum's favours) and familiar (most of the people cast as King's entourage were very well known a while back: there's Christian Slater, Geena Davis, Haley Joel Osment, and Kyle McLachlan). Your overall response to the film will depend on whether you feel this is enough to compensate for the fact that in the end it's almost exactly the film you would expect it to be.

As I say, the first half of the film is an almost forensic depiction of the grotesquely over-rich at play – careless of other people and objects, shielded by the marvellous protection of money, the kind of which the likes of you or I (probably) can only dream of dreaming of. There's little implied commentary here, just a dispassionate eye, and the result is almost Ballardian in its ability to unsettle. But a film that operates only on that kind of anthropological level is probably going to be a bit too subtle for the comfort of a big studio, and so just in time for the third act Blink Twice makes a rapid and not very convincing transition into a much more traditional kind of psycho-horror movie.

This film revolves around the routine exploitation and abuse of women by much wealthier and more powerful men. As I say, the introduction of this element happens rapidly and not especially persuasively, but as a viewer you know it's not like this is just a feint setting up a further twist later on: one does not invoke this particular spectre so lightly, for fear of seeming to dismiss the crimes of the likes of Harvey Weinstein as the stuff of a trivial plot device. Which is not to say that Blink Twice isn't reliant on some slightly dubious plot devices itself just to make the narrative function.

And one does have to ask why. The film explores the theme of misogynistic abuse by including misogynistic abuse; the only metaphorical element comes when it attempts to address the question of why the perpetrators are able to do so with seeming impugnity. The real-world victims' reluctance to speak up finds its movie parallel in the film-victims having their memories tampered with by their attackers: 'you're really good at forgetting,' the main villain tells Ackie's character, as if to explain why she is singled out for abuse. This, to me, seems to come perilously close to blaming the real-world victims for conniving in and enabling their own mistreatment. This was jarring in a film which otherwise does not go in much for moral ambiguity or indeed subtlety, and which frequently operates as a kind of grand guignol black comedy rather than a serious look at the issues involved.

Because in the end it does feel like a kind of rape-revenge fantasy, a somewhat disreputable genre at the best of times. The world is not as easy to fix as it is presented here. Obviously as a straight white male I am on some level the bad guy of films like Blink Twice, so my opinion is probably of questionable value, but I can't see much merit to films like this beyond simple catharsis (not that this is of negligible worth, of course) – it doesn't discuss real events, or consider the roots of this problem, or propose any realistic solutions to these very serious issues. It just presents a fantasticalised version of horrendous crimes and offers a simplistic resolution to them. It does so stylishly and skilfully, but that can only disguise the slightness of the intent so much. There's a lot of talent at work in this movie; my hope is that Kravitz, Ackie, Arjoa and the rest can apply their abilities to something more substantial in future.

Awix

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