Writer-director Nele Mueller-Stöfen’s “Delicious” hides its secrets well. But if you’re observant, the clues pile up long before the thriller’s too-patient build-up drops its big revelations on you.

She’s tapping into international inequality in this horrific tale of German “haves” who have gained the notice of pan-European have-nots. And as we see and hear a group of employees at a posh French hotel ponder if they’re “rich enough” to be worth their trouble, we develop expectations about what’s to come.

Is this a “Parasite” variation, with the working class/working poor simply pilfering from and squatting on the rich? Is it another “Funny Games,” where they’re punished for their greed-gotten affluence? A Baader Meinhof kidnapping? Or is it something worse?

You have no idea. But you will once you start looking at that occasionally glimpsed “gang” and the predelictions and manipulations of its cunning Spanish housekeeper/leader, the obvious becomes obvious.

Valerie Pachner stars as born-rich corporate IT guru who brings her husband (Fahri Vardim) and children (Naila Schuberth and Caspar Hoffman) on vacation to her family’s villa in the south of France.

But to get there, they have to be driven through the latest notorious round of French street protests, this time over income inequality and soaring food costs.

“Those people don’t care about us,” biologist-dad John tells the kids. If “care” broadly means “notice” in this case, John could not be more wrong.

Because when they arrive, unpack and go out to dinner at the restaurant of a swanky local hotel, some of the staff raises its eyebrows. Once enough conversations — including high-pressure business cell calls — have been overheard, the die is cast.

“A drink, for the road, on the house?”

That “innocent” offer sets a whole plot in motion that involves intentionally gashing ringleader Teodora’s (Carla Diaz) arm for the “accident” they let tipsy John think he’s driven into in the family’s Jaguar.

“No hospital” will be necessary, take-charge wife Esther says, when the panic subsides and she’s gotten her “This is why you shouldn’t drink and drive” (in German with subtitles, or dubbed) judgement snipe in.

Yes, and who got into the car with their KIDS after he’d been drinking, eh?

Esther’s band-aid first aid for an injury that A) needs stitches and B) which obsewrvant eleven year old Abby says “looks like a cut” by a knife, and a few hundred euros “bribe” sends Teodora on her way.

But she comes back. Of course she comes back. And as she’s noticed how sloppy the family is, with their villa housekeeper out of town, Teodora makes them a deal. She’ll be their housekeeper and cook, which gives her a place to stay as she was “let go” from her hotel job because of her “injury.”

“The long con” here has Teodora corrupting and winning the trust of the kids and working herself into a position where she can exploit rifts in this marriage of unequals. “Secrets” play to her advantage, as her seldom seen accomplices watch and wait.

The pacing here is somewhat ponderous as actress-turned-writer/director Mueller-Stöfen takes her sweet time setting her up “surprises.”

But the foreshadowing gives a lot away, and once you’ve gotten past “No, she wouldn’t” yes she will. And the only shock in that is elementary and generic.

Diaz makes a cryptic but not-exactly-compelling cunning planner/manipulator/seducer, and the rifts in the family are obvious to the point of melodramatic, with some so poorly set-up that they have to be explained away.

“Delicious” is creepy enough. The character flaws — obvious or occasionally subtle — intrigue.

But Mueller-Stöfen loses track of the “politics” of this variation on “The Menu,” and the picture has too little else going on that surprises or wins us over. The “battle of wits” is pretty one-sided. We end up investing in a slow-moving, low-heat thriller that never really comes to a boil.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Valerie Pachner, Carla Diaz, Fahri Vardim, Naila Schuberth and Caspar Hoffman.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Nele Mueller-Stöfen. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:42