In this directorial debut, a tech tycoon invites a waitress and her friend to vacation on a private island. The film also stars Adria Argiona, Alia Shawkat, Simon Rex and Haley Joel Osment.
At the beginning of Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, Blink Twice , a tech tycoon caught in a storm of controversy offers a familiar apology. “After everything that happened, the billionaire will step back from his company. He regrets his actions and, in an attempt to change, he will go to his private island to reflect,” Slater King (Channing Tatum) says in a video. We never find out what Slater did, but with our digital wasteland littered with similarly scripted #MeToo penances, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out.
Frida (an excellent Naomi Ackie) seems unperturbed by the accusations against Slater or the ostentatious sincerity of his recorded remorse. When we meet the optimistic ambitious nail designer, she’s sitting on the toilet of her dilapidated apartment, watching a video of the beleaguered tycoon with loving eyes, fantasizing about the day the two can meet. Then, it’s fateful that the next evening, while working as a waitress at a fundraising event, Frida runs into Slater.
Their meeting is clumsy but exciting — a nod to a romantic comedy. Meet-cute fit. She stumbles on the hem of her dress; he helps her up and holds her gaze. Later that night, when the party dies down, Slater asks Frieda to go with him and his crew to his private island. She eagerly accepts the invitation and asks her best friend and roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) to come along.
If Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion and The Menu have taught us anything, it’s that a group of strangers in a secluded location can lead to trouble. Kravitz, who wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, quickly establishes Blink Twice as both social satire and horror, yet finding a balance between the two proves more challenging as the narrative progresses.
Cellphones are not allowed on Slater’s island. Like the people portrayed in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, the staff members smile with smiles that only reflect their vacant stares. There’s no need for accessories as matching white linen sets are provided for the islanders. Alcohol is plentiful, drugs abound, and dinner each evening is prepared by Slater’s friend, Cody (Simon Rex), using locally grown produce and served by candlelight. The scenes are sunlit and dreamy, facilitating the otherworldly mood of this tropical island. Unlike recent dinners offered to the rich, Blink Twice is only partly about ultra-wealthy revelry. Soon after they arrive, Frida notices strange events on the island.
A maid (María Elena Olivares) repeats strange phrases in front of her; Jess disappears, and Frida realizes her memories are a growing cluster of images. Why can’t she remember the origin of random bruises or the dirt under her fingernails? Something similar seems to be happening to the other women on the island, including Sarah (Hit Man’s Adria Argiona, excellent), a former contestant on a Survivor-like reality show with whom Frida competes for Slater’s attention.
Kravitz is primarily interested in sexual violence and mental trauma against women. Her film is a lot like Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, except Kravitz shows the bloodshed. Here vengeance, thrillingly, is much more of an abstraction. There’s also a flowing attempt to examine the simultaneous invisibility and hyper-visibility of black women, especially early in the film when Frida is on the job, but it’s frustratingly subdued in the later action.
As Frida makes sense of these bizarre events, she stumbles upon nightmarish truths about Slater’s island; Blink Twice revel in horror plots while abandoning the pretense of social satire. Kravitz, working with DP Adam Newport-Bera (The Last Black Man in San Francisco), rewrites the island’s old idyllic images with a touch of malice, and turns the coniferous enclave into a haunted realm of deadly obstacles.
There are moments when Blink Twice’s busy narrative — filled with ups and downs along with Frida’s gripping quest for survival — and its slippery visual language come together to realize Kravitz’s ambitions. But Blink Twice is ultimately too scattered, stretched too thin by the demands of its loaded themes, specific images, half-baked plot points, and partially realized characters.
If Blink Twice succeeds to this extent, it’s largely thanks to some superb performances. Tatum gives a strong turn in a role that requires him to find subtle ways to enhance his charm. But it is Ackie and Arjona who really make the film focused and energetic. Ackie, who plays Whitney Houston in Kasi Lemmons’ 2022 biopic, is a force to be reckoned with, offering a powerful portrayal of a woman burdened by her own trauma. Her performance is raw and vulnerable, inviting us to understand the depth of Frida’s character despite the thin sketch.
Along with Arjona, Ackie is a powerful force to be reckoned with.
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