Blink Twice

Review by Mark Woodring

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: someone meets someone and decides to accept an invitation to someplace fabulous, where all seems incredible, until that nagging voice in the back of your head incessantly whispers “something’s wrong here…”

**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**

Blink Twice - Review
Blink Twice (Amazon/MGM)

 

103 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Zoe Kravitz and E.T. Feigenbaum
Directed by Zoe Kravitz

 

Synopsis:

When tech billionaire Slater King meets cocktail waitress Frida at his fundraising gala, he invites her to join him and his friends on a dream vacation on his private island. As strange things start to happen, Frida questions her reality.

First-time director Zoe Kravitz chooses such a backdrop for Blink Twice, and she assembles a fine cast to present it to us. With Channing Tatum and Naomie Ackie in the lead, we also get surprising turns from Christian Slater and Haley Joel Osment, along with a welcome appearance by the great Geena Davis.

Kravitz also co-wrote the script, so she’s got a solid chunk of flesh in this fight. These are her ideas, her words, and her interpretation of those words on screen.

t least she had the good sense to stay behind the camera for her first feature; I have found that triple-duty usually doesn’t go well, even for seasoned veterans.

So how did she do?

Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Without delving too far into the plot details (and spoilers), let’s start with the positives:

I don’t generally consider myself a Channing Tatum fan, but he really sinks into the role of Slater King quite nicely. Naomie Ackie, having such a varied background as featuring in Star Wars, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker and portraying the incredible Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance With Somebody, jumps into the role of Frida, whose obsession with King seems to be divinely rewarded with an invitation to his private island with his group of friends for “a good time.”

The supporting cast fills out the screen nicely, with Alia Shawkat as Jess, Frida’s best friend and companion on the trip, really seizing every scene she’s in.

Days blur into days on the island, as fantastic meals and endless champagne end with nights of drug-induced debauchery, something King was lambasted for prior to some ill-defined “incident,” but which is still done, though with “intention,” as if that’s somehow better…?

Frida and Jess begin to feel amiss, though, as they can’t seem to recall everything, or even what day it is, and a series of red-herring clues begin to pop up across the guests which further intimate some questionable dealings.

All this is fine. I feel like the tech-bro background of Slater King, plus some interesting language choices early on, could have been run into an interesting exploration of humanity’s fragile dependence on memory.

Instead, the film devolves into a horrific portrayal I called “the gendered version of The Hunt.” I won’t spoil the details, even though I feel like I should, but if there was a movie to represent the most radical of Fourth Wave Feminist fears, this would be it.

I won’t defend the men in this movie, because they are, frankly, indefensible. The movie does manage to fulfill one aspect of FWF, though, and that’s gender equality; Blink Twice absolutely demonstrates a woman can be just as horrifyingly terrible an individual as a man.

And that’s a fact.

What could have been a great look into the wider human experience instead morphs into a scathing, angry screed against men, all men, and the audience will certainly be limited to a certain segment of the population

It’s a shame Kravitz wasted this opportunity and these performances (across the board) on a piece of narrowly-targeted pablum. She has clearly demonstrated she is more than comfortable behind the camera, so I hope her future work is more accessible to a wider audience than Blink Twice is bound to be.

Blink Twice hits theaters Friday, August 23 and stars Naomie Ackie, Channing Tatum, Alia Shawkat, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Liz Caribel, Levon Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Geena Davis, Cris Costa, and Trew Mullen.

And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.

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