The best thrillers keep you guessing. They stay one step ahead of you and string you along with one puzzling event after another. The make you gasp when the big twists happen, and leave thinking about them for the hours, days, and months that follow. But to do that, the twists need to work while still feeling surprising. That’s not an easy accomplishment.
And Zoë Kravitz (Kimi, The Batman) is trying to direct a thriller like that — a movie that is equal parts timely, inventive, and surprising with Blink Twice. The plot, while audacious and ridiculous on the surface, feels eerily similar to the horror stories being told in the media today about many of pop culture’s biggest figures.
In the fictional world that Blink Twice takes place in, that figure is Slater King. King is a billionaire tech mogul capable of buying nearly anything he’d ever need. That includes a remote island that he’s forced to stow away at after being “cancelled” and forced to make a public apology for unspecified past behavior.
But he’s “better” now, and seems rather calm and sane when we, as well as our main protagonist Frida (played by Naomi Ackie from Lady Macbeth and I Wanna Dance with Somebody), first meet him. Frida is a cocktail waitress working an event Slater appears at. Slater is so charming, and aptly played well by Channing Tatum (21 Jump Street, Magic Mike, Magic Mike’s Last Dance), that despite his past controversies, Frida can’t help but take the bate.
Frida, along with her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat), are invited to Slater’s private island. From there, stranger and stranger events start occurring. As you can imagine, all is not as it seems as Frida’s predicament turns from unsettling to deadly.
And for the most part, Blink Twice is pretty fun, even if the subject matter and themes behind it all is quite upsetting. The shooting locations picked by Kravitz and her crew are marvelous and inviting. Although I wouldn’t personally partake in a private getaway with a mogul harboring a bad past like Slater, you can see how the trip can be so tempting.
Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum provide standout performances as well. Ackie manages to make her character’s realizations feel natural, turning from the point of pure bliss to sheer panic. Tatum gets a more grandiose role, which he uses to great effect. He’s a very physical performer, and that physicality adds to the dominance that Slater King thinks that he has over his friends and guests.
And the supporting cast is all quite excellent and volatile as well. Once at the island, we meet various friends and acquaintances that Slater has also invited to stay. Among them are characters played by the likes of Adria Arjona (Triple Frontier, Morbius, Hit Man), Christian Slater (Heathers, Zoolander), Simon Rex (Red Rocket, The Sweet East), Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense, A.I. Artificial Intelligence), and Kyle MacLachlan (Dune, Blue Velvet, Fire Walk with Me). As far as casting is concerned, Zoë Kravitz nails it.
My issues with Blink Twice concern the plot, which feels as though it is moving at a snail’s pace considering the so-called “twist” is so easy to guess you could probably infer what happens even before you watch the film (I mean just look at the poster). It’s a mix between a season of The White Lotus and Get Out. The themes of the film, concerning how money and power intertwine and eventually ruin the lives of others, essentially just become the plot rather than vice versa, where the plot should inform those themes.
Blink Twice wears its influences on its sleeve, but for a directorial debut like this for Zoë Kravitz, I thought it was pretty commendable. The industry is begging for a few more genre filmmakers capable of projects that are equally fun and thought-provoking, and Kravitz is able to switch between one and another on a dime. The performances help elevate the material, too, which inevitably pushes Blink Twice over the finish line.
Score: 7/10
- Cast: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Adria Arjona, Alia Shawkat, Liz Caribel Sierra, Trew Mullen, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Levon Hawke, Geena Davis, Kyle MacLachlan
- Crew: Zoë Kravitz, E.T. Feigenbaum, Adam Newport-Berra, Kathryn J. Schubert, Chanda Dancy
- Genre: Mystery, Thriller
- Runtime: 103 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: August 23, 2024
- Read about Blink Twice (2024) on Wikipedia and IMDb
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