A young woman slowly comes to realize that everything might not be perfect on the rich guy Epstein Island-like resort she’s been crashing in Blink Twice, opening in cinemas worldwide this weekend. This well-executed directorial debut from actress Zoë Kravitz contains some imaginative visual flourishes and solid performances, but her screenplay co-written with E.T. Feigenbaum is a narrative twist or two from reaching truly great thriller status.
Blink Twice riffs heavily on elements from Get Out and The Menu, adding a heavy dose #MeToo relevancy to those films’ race relations and eat-the-rich themes. And while this one isn’t nearly as successful as satire, it’s more effective in more traditional thriller terms. The result is something like a best-case scenario for Blumhouse’s misbegotten Fantasy Island update from a few years back.
Naomi Ackie stars as Frida, hostess for a catering company who opens Blink Twice in the midst of a fervent social media scroll that any member of the audience will identify with. She lands on an apology video from tech CEO Slater King (Channing Tatum), which results in a Google search that gives us quick-fire character backstory in creative, efficient, and relatable fashion.
Frida just happens to be working at an event for King’s company, and she and roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) crash the affair after they clock out. She manages to introduce herself to the billionaire tech bro in memorable fashion, earning the girls an immediate invite aboard his private jet and off to his private island for a vacation of vague length and purpose.
Also along for the island retreat are Slater’s personal assistant Stacy (Geena Davis), his therapist (Kyle MacLachlan) chef Cody (Simon Rex), friends Vic (Christian Slater), Lucas (Levan Hawke) and Tom (Haley Joel Osment), and their girlfriends, Camilla (Liz Caribel), Heather (Trew Mullen), and Sarah (Adria Arjona), a former contestant on a Survivor-like show who seems to be competing with Frida for Slater’s attention.
But through a hazy fog of alcohol, drugs, Frida and Jess discover that everything may not be all it’s cracked up to be on this isolated island in the middle of nowhere, where they have voluntarily given up their phones. Their feet are dirty, there’s dirt under their fingernails, and unexplained bruises. Something foul is afoot.
Don’t Blink has a terrifying implication, Dennis Reynolds-style, that hangs over the first half of the film: the women find themselves in the middle of nowhere, without their phones and far from any authority, amid of group of men they do not know. They, and we, know that things probably aren’t on the level. What’s scary is how far they go along with it all, knowing what could happen if they don’t.
But when the movie does start to explain what’s going on, it becomes a little less interesting; these men, and especially Tatum’s Slater were a lot scarier behind the veil of formal politeness than outed as Cosby-style sex pests. Blink Twice works pretty well as a parable about sexual assault, but opportunities for real-deal social satire are missed.
Ackie is solid as Blink Twice‘s lead, but Arjona steals our attention: her character, too, boasts the kind of engaging backstory that Frida sorely lacks. There are a lot of familiar faces in the cast that are great to see in a top-flight thriller (Davis, especially, makes the most of her screen time), and Tatum is at his subversive best here, complete with a climactic wig-out apology scene that involves Nicolas Cage-style emoting.
We know where Blink Twice is headed from the very beginning, and the script really could have used a twist or two to challenge our assumptions. But there’s still satisfaction in watching something like this play out from a talented cast and under the hands of an assured filmmaker. This is a surprisingly well-handled thriller from first-time director Kravitz, and one of the best debuts in recent memory.
