Imagine you’re a mildly depressed cocktail waitress who dreams of bigger things. One night, while helping cater an event spearheaded by a very hot tech billionaire whose very real name is Slater King, the hot tech billionaire takes a liking to you, inviting you to join him and his friends on his private jet to his private island. Would you decline? Hell no.
Such is the situation in which Frida (a wacky and endearing Naomi Ackie) finds herself in Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice, which stars Kravitz’s real-life fiancé Channing Tatum as the aforementioned hot tech billionaire. Of course, as this darkly comic thriller unwinds, it’s clear Frida may have made a very poor choice by setting foot on that island.
Night after night, debauchery ensues, with endless blunts and bottomless booze. The playlist always delivers on the vibe, the dinners are incomparable, and everyone looks even more beautiful coated in a layer of island sweat under the moonlight. But at some point, Frida begins to notice little things she can’t explain: dirt under her fingernails, memories she can’t place and nights she can’t remember. Scariest of all, she doesn’t know the time or the date, and no one else seems to either. Frida’s alarm bells don’t truly go off until she realizes her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat, stealing every scene as always), who joined her on the trip, has suddenly disappeared. And Slater, along with all his friends and hangers-on, denies ever having seen Jess on the island. According to them, Frida came alone. Frida starts playing detective with the help of Sarah (Adria Arjona), who also picks up on clues that suggest things are not as glamorous as they seem. (Here’s a little hint: The movie’s original title was Pussy Island.)
Up until this point, Blink Twice feels like one film — all fun, revelry and seduction. Then it splits into another film — one attempting to take a page from Jordan Peele, though it never quite pulls it off. What the women discover is shockingly dark, and as Slater keeps reminding them, it’s always better to forget our pasts and, presumably, the traumas we’ve left behind and the ones that await us.
Unfortunately, the film doesn’t earn its reveal, making what should be treated with a lot more gravity feel laughable. And as the women attempt to expose the toxic masculinity plaguing the island, their team effort feels like an on-the-nose reminder that, hey, if women just drop their issues with each other and join forces, imagine all the good they could do.
It’s clear what loose themes Kravitz is getting at as co-writer alongside E.T. Feigenbaum (who created the sorely missed 2020 series High Fidelity, which starred Kravitz). The movie spotlights the greed and excess of the world’s billionaires and tech overlords, and seeing as how Kravitz is a privileged nepo baby herself, there are certainly layers here. But it seems she’s bitten off more than she can chew, with the film feeling poorly plotted, and the traumatic reveal ultimately feeling like a poor plot device. Where there’s humor, it’s often clichéd or rooted in simple gags. Apart from Shawkat, Blink Twice is not as funny as it thinks it is, nor as smart.
But the film succeeds elsewhere. It’s gorgeously shot, it’s clear Kravitz has a lot of ideas, and there are successes when it comes to the technical side of things. It’s easy to feel as though you’re on the island alongside Frida thanks to Blink Twice’s sunny, sumptuous cinematography (kudos to cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra) and slick visual cues. It also has a wonderfully quirky cast, including Kyle MacLachlan, Christian Slater, Geena Davis, Simon Rex and Haley Joel Osment.
More than anything, though, what’s fun to watch is how Kravitz shoots her love, Tatum, who has never looked better — and he does indeed manage to pull off the eerie charm of a millennial megalomaniac. In every shot, he towers tall and glows gold, as if the sun always shines on his rich ass.
Blink Twice calls to mind the wonderful work many directors have pulled from leads who are also their romantic partners: Noah Baumbach with Greta Gerwig, John Krasinski with Emily Blunt, even John Cassavetes with Gena Rowlands (two big inspirations of Kravitz and Tatum). While Tatum isn’t quite in the same league as these folks, he may get close in the hands of Kravitz. Who would’ve thought?
