Daniel Kaluuya, the British star of “Get Out,” “Nope” and “Judas & the Black Messiah,” steps behind the camera for “The Kitchen,” a story of underclass unrest in the face of official indifference, and one young man’s conflicted efforts to give a boy a better life than he himself experienced growing up.

Kaluuya co-wrote and co-directed the film, which may have nothing to do with its distracted focus and murky messaging. Or that may explain the movie’s failings entirely. Whatever the cause, it makes for a somewhat immersive mixed-bag of a movie, which puts a damper on any temptation to use “promising first film” in describing it.

In the London of the near future, there is but one traditional “Housing Estate” (project) standing, the either half-finished or half-ruined complex and eco-system called “The Kitchen.”

It’s where the displaced of all races — working poor or permanently-unemployed — can live as squatters. But “they” want the land. And all the daily “radio” preaching from DJ “Lord Kitchener” (Ian Wright) might not be enough to prevent the Lord and his People’s violent mass eviction.

“They can’t stop ‘we’,” he tells his audience every morning. But Isaac, aka “Izi” (Kano, aka Kane Robinson) has him tuned out.

Izi has a steady job at the Funeral Home of the Future — Life After Life. That’s where the dead are turned into planters for trees, a far more productive and environtmentally sound use of corpses than embalming or cremating them. And gainfully-employed Izi has put in for and been accepted for a single-occupancy flat by high-tech housers Buena Vida. Izi has his eye on escaping this “sh–hole.”

But one funeral service breaks his upsell-the-bereaved pitch and fake-empathy for the dearly departed. A woman name Toni is buried. Izi seems a little shaken. And her 12-or-13 year-old son (Jedaiah Bannerman) notices.

The kid, Benji, asks the obvious question, the one any kid who never knew his father might. Izi brushes that off, rebuffs the kid’s enthusiasm for his motorbike and makes his way back to “The Kitchen.” But the boy weighs on his mind and his conscience.

And having nowhere else to go, the kid makes his way to the infamous squatter’s zone on his own, falls in with Staples’ (Hope Ikpoku Jnr) gang, which feeds kids pancakes, identifies talent and recruits them for what we guess is either a crime spree or a war, or perhaps both.

“The Kitchen” thus sets up as a tug of war over the boy’s future and a long, cold night of the soul for loner Izi, who can see his way out, and the contract for a “single occupancy” apartment standing in the way of taking in an orphaned boy.

But rather than wring pathos out of this and score political points with these characters’ plight, Kaluuya & Co content themselves with immersing us in this “Attack the Block/District B-13″ world, with its multi-racial teeming masses, future Afro-Caribbean hip hop and patois and melting pot of the impoverished milieu.

It’s not really enough. Kaluuya and his co-director, Kidwe Tavares, are first-time feature filmmakers, with only co-screenwriter Joe Murtagh (“American Animals”) having credits that suggest he knows the secret of creating a compelling and complete narrative. This isn’t anybody involved’s best credit.

Characters are introduced — Benji’s cute tween gal pal Ruby (Teija Kabs) — and somewhat forgotten. Themes are thrown out there, discarded and picked up again.

The best idea in this might be the town crier DJ, Lord Kitchener, whose name is an historical pun. But that’s borrowed from Samuel L. Jackson’s Mister Señor Love Daddy in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”

Even with that welcome “borrowing,” “Kitchen” adds to a meal only half-cooked.

Rating: R, violence, profanity

Cast: Kano, Jedaiah Bannerman, Hope Ikpoku Jnr, Teija Kabs, Demmy Ladipo and Ian Wright

Credits: Directed by Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares, scripted by Daniel Kaluuya and Joe Murtagh. A Film 4/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:47