“Blink Twice” opens with a blurry close-up of a frog, then comes into sharp relief. The sound is eerie; the image is sinister and gorgeous and mysterious and startling. That’s how the movie is, too. “Blink Twice,” the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz, who also co-wrote it (with E.T. Feigenbaum), is a post-#MeToo party-girl nightmare thriller made with an unusual sense of intimacy. Kravitz, a veteran actress (“The Batman,” “Kimi,” “Big Little Lies”), doesn’t rely on the standard movie rules of medium/point-of-view. She composes the film in vivid close-ups, using each shot (a cocktail, a glance, a social media clip) to tell a story, drawing us into the center of an encounter, so that we simultaneously stare at it and experience it. Her technique is captivating; this is the work of a natural filmmaker.
I wouldn’t call “Blink Twice” a horror movie, but it does have some pretty scary stuff. It’s about a naive but socially ambitious waitress named Frida (Naomi Ackie) who gets invited to a private island owned by a famous tech billionaire named Slater King (Channing Tatum). Once there, she joins the other handpicked girls who’ve been invited to the island, as well as the men who’ve been there (most of whom work for King-Tech), as they indulge in a lavish, never-ending party vacation. In the tropical paradise setting, the fancy drinks keep flowing; the drugs keep being dispensed; the gourmet dinners keep being served; and the accommodations (exotic perfumes, high-thread-count sheets, and free clothes) come from the resort of my dreams.
In other words, it's all part of an elitist supernatural fantasy, one that's too good to be true. And soon enough, the audience starts wondering the same thing Frida is wondering: What's the trick? What's the price? What's really going on?
Slater King, played by Channing Tatum with a wispy beard and a soft smile, is a world-class charmer (though he has gotten into trouble for unspecified bad behavior and is now “in therapy”). He puts out a seemingly unforced good signal but after a while it’s so stubborn that there’s something ominous about it. The swanky party atmosphere, animated by delicious needlepoint notes like James Brown’s “Rise and Lead Your Merry Spirits,” is all about “do what you feel” freedom, yet it’s more than just a cult. The vibe is corporate fun. If women don’t smile and flirt the right way, they’re seen as out of place.
“Blink Twice” may at times remind you of “Midsommar,” a fantasy film by Ari Aster, in which an American couple wears a sun-dappled white cotton dress and tells the story of an American couple’s vacation to a Swedish municipality that turns out to be a notorious vacation. He is The film had a dark, illicit fantasy feel to it. But Blink Twice, despite some wild twists and turns, is rooted in the sexual threat of the real world. It tells the stories of predators like Jeffrey Epstein, who brought vacationers (and other predators) to his escape island, and Bill Cosby, who used drugs to commit his crimes. For a time in Blink Twice, there are clues that something very strange is going on. Frida drips meat juice onto her dress…and after a while, the stain disappears. She keeps noticing dirt under her fingernails. And what about the mysterious maid (María Elena Olivares) who keeps appearing to be a figment of Don’t Look Now? Her main job seems to be killing the giant, poisonous yellow snakes that inhabit the island. But why? (As it turns out, in this film, the snake venom is truth serum.)
Naomi Ackie, who was so great as Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody, makes her mark here as a star-struck climber who knows how to shine. With her cropped hair, she resembles an early ’60s R&B star, but she has a strikingly layered, contemporary presence. We can see that Frida is in love with Slater, to the point of sneaking into the white-walled King Take party where she’s hired as a waitress. She thinks she’s hit the jackpot when he invites her to the island, even with red streaks in her big, sparkling eyes.
Frieda has brought along her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat), and she feels protected. The film seems to revolve around the idea that Slater, Prince Charming, has fallen in love with her; and when we see the wary interaction between her and Sara (Adria Arjona), a longtime “Survivor” star, we think their rivalry will drive the story. But that’s just one of Kravitz’s subtle tricks.
Men look arrogant without being arrogant. excessively These characters are creepy, from the big-time executive Christian Slater to the green bean tech wizard Lucas (Levon Hawke) to the obsessive Tom (Haley Joel Osment) to the chef Cody, played by Simon Rex as a New Age food guru. They’re presented not as villains, but as regular people. But that’s the point. As the film slowly unravels what’s going on, they come across as versions of Ben Kingsley’s character in Death and the Maiden, representing the darker side of regular guys. And yet, if Frida and her island guests are victims, why, day in and day out, do they know nothing about what’s going on?
The answer is terrifying, and it comes from a screenplay that at least flirts with a kind of chemical science fiction (though it’s presented as very real). The revelations the film eventually makes are perhaps less compelling in terms of narrative than the setup it sets up. Still, the twists and turns carry you along with a terrifying logic that functions as both story and metaphor. Blink Twice turns out to be a feminist metaphor for memory, which it does in a literal and evocative way. But Zoë Kravitz, who works brilliantly, also makes a grander statement about all the things women are told (and tell themselves) to forget. In Blink Twice, life can be a dream. The real nightmare happens when you wake up.
