For the first hour of its runtime, Blink Twice is a fun, intriguing mystery/social thriller, along the lines of a breezier Get Out or a more debauched Glass Onion. When ambitious young Frida (Naomi Ackie) accepts an invitation to the private island of tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), it’s clear—arguably too clear—that things aren’t exactly as they seem. (Why do the island’s employees keep giving Frida knowing looks? Why can’t any of the women remember the previous nights? And what’s with that ominous bass riff?)
But first-time director and co-writer Zoë Kravitz (proving herself an able stylist) handles the material with a light touch to begin with, lingering on beautiful bodies, tropical cocktails, and the azure water of the swimming pool. Even as storm clouds gather, the tone is predominantly playful, even goofy: dicks get drawn on foreheads, party girls knock back snake venom tequila, and Adria Arjona shouts the phrase “fat bluuuuuunts!” as loudly as possible. The context may grow steadily more ominous (for instance, “fat blunts” is the code word to alert Frida of impending danger), but on the whole, Blink Twice remains a good time—for the first hour, anyway.
Then there’s that twist…
(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Naomi Ackie
Amazon MGM StudiosThat Blink Twice becomes something much, much heavier isn’t exactly a surprise. Even without the content warning advising audiences to watch out for “mature themes and violence, including sexual violence”, there is something inherently nefarious about a billionaire with a private island—and one look at Slater King and his band of braying bros (including Christian Slater, Simon Rex, and Haley Joel Osment) is enough to tell you they may not be on the up-and-up. What’s surprising is just how brutal Blink Twice is willing to get, turning a breezy time at the movies into something truly, deeply upsetting. (This is not necessarily a good thing.)
So, the twist: The complementary perfume provided to the women (Ackie, Arjona, Alia Shawkat, and others) is actually a powerful amnesiac made from a flower native to Slater’s island. During the day, the women are free to swim, smoke, and dance as they please; at night, they are captured and violently raped by the men, who are secure in the knowledge that their victims will wake up the next day with no memory of what transpired.
Wealthy men fly over to partake in the sadistic fun, taking home a bottle of the perfume as a gift. The memory loss is so complete that Frida doesn’t even remember her previous trip to the island (which gave her a scar on her temple and resulted in the loss of Christian Slater’s pinkie). The venom from the island’s native snakes serves as an antidote; when Frida’s friend Jess (Shawkat) is bit by one, she is killed the same night, with her passed-around lighter the only evidence that she was ever there.
On paper, this is a solid twist. Not only is it utterly horrifying, it’s both surprising and inevitable, putting everything that came before it in context. (At one point in the first half, I wondered why these beautiful, drunk, horny people never seemed to have any sex. Little did I know.) The problem is how Kravitz decides to get this information across to the audience. Some may find her graphic depiction of rape to be honest and unflinching, and they are well within their rights to think so. But to me, it represents a failure of nerve.
The content warning that opens the film is unquestionably warranted. There are not one but two scenes where Slater and his men sexually assault bound, terrified women. The first, where Frida recalls Jess’ murder, is a quick, disorienting flashback that sucker punches the audience; by contrast, the second rape scene, a tableau of shrieking, panicked women being beaten and violated by guffawing monsters, is excruciatingly drawn out. The women sob; they hyperventilate; they scream for help that never comes. It’s not the most harrowing rape scene ever filmed—this is a glossy Hollywood production, after all, not Irreversible—but it’s some dark, dark stuff.
Too dark, honestly, for the movie it’s in. Blink Twice has been compared to the work of Jordan Peele, a comparison it begs from the very first frame. (The first scene, a mysterious flash-forward to an animal whose significance we don’t learn until later, is more than a little reminiscent of Us’ rabbits or Nope’s killer chimp.)
But Peele is an absolute master of tonal balance, the secret ingredient that legions of post-Get Out social thrillers lack. Peele can crack you up and scare you sleepless, but every individual element in his films is in perfect proportion with every other element. The humor never cheapens the horror, and the horror is never so overwhelming that you can’t pay attention to anything else.
Blink Twice tries and fails to strike the same balance. As promising a debut as it is for Kravitz, it seems like the kind of movie that sours upon rewatching.
When you know what’s waiting for you after an hour, watching Channing Tatum shuffle around his mansion vaping and arguing about interior design with Geena Davis feels like a glib waste of time. And once the fresh wound of the rape scene wears off, you start to ask inconvenient questions—like, “Why couldn’t Zoë Kravitz use the same fragmented editing that made the first half so engaging to suggest this terrible secret in a more careful, effective way?” Or, “Why did Zoë Kravitz soundtrack a gang rape with the goddamn Bully Maguire song?”
We could always use more directors making big, bold swings for the fences, but not when they break our nose with a foul ball.
