Blink Twice (now streaming on MGM+) marks the arrival of Zoe Kravitz, filmmaker. We know her for on-screen roles in The Batman and Big Little Lies, but this film establishes her as a director worthy of our eyeballs. She and E.T. Feigenbaum co-wrote this bold and outrageous satirical thriller starring I Wanna Dance With Somebody star Naomi Ackie as a waitress swept into the money-is-no-object sphere of a one-percenter played, against type, by Channing Tatum. This is Kravitz’s assured and confident behind-the-camera debut, proving she has significant visual acumen and more than a little something to say.
BLINK TWICE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: We meet Frida (Ackie) as she sits on the toilet and scrolls on her phone. Note to filmmakers everywhere: This precise scenario is how you make your protagonist relatably human, right off the bat. But don’t worry, we’ll be with her every step of the way. Frida seems to aspire to be a fancy manicurist who paints tiny little animals on fingernails, but reality dictates that she works for a catering company, serving food to rich people. One of the faces she lingers on during her toilet-scrolling is Slater King (Tatum), a baguillionaire tech CEO who was #MeToo’d (for reasons that go unspecified) and stepped down and went away for a while and came back to public life to apologize over and over again and try to make himself seem more human by saying he has chickens now. Chickens! Granted, they’re on the private island he purchased. But, chickens! How down to freaking earth can you get?
Well, Slater’s at the event where Frida and her bestie/roomie Jess (Alia Shawkat) are pouring champagne and, per their supervisor’s instruction, being “invisible.” The ladies finish their shift and pull out the evening wear they stashed in their bags and finagle their way into the afterparty with a couple of shrewd moves and more than a bit of charm. And you know, Slater seems like a sweet, respectful guy – a sweet, respectful guy who gives Frida a lot of one-on-one attention. Now, this is where the movie threatens to become an explosion of celeb cameos (that end up not being cameos at all, mind you): Christian Slater as a Polaroid photographer named Vic, Simon Rex as a chef named Cody, Adriana Arjona as survivor-reality-show celeb Sarah, Kyle MacLachlan as Slater’s psychotherapist, Geena Davis as one of Slater’s handlers, Haley Joel Osment as a wannabe crypto bro I think. The less-famous ones are pothead du jour Heather (Trew Mullen), bland skinny blond boy Lucas (Levon Hawke) and Camilla (Liz Caribel), who just sold an astrology app she developed.
Who are all these people? Slater’s entourage of pals old and brand new. And he’s just asked Frida and Jess to join the exclusive after-afterparty where everyone piles onto his private jet and jets out to his island for an unspecified amount of time to drink and eat and do drugs and swim and lay around and wake up and wonder why everything seems perfect and fun even when everything doesn’t seem exactly right. I mean, Slater employs an omnipresent armed security guy at all times (I guess famous people need these guys?), the multiple guest rooms are stocked with clothing for everyone because they all left on a whim and packed nothing (Frida and Jess chalk this up to the way extremely rich people do things) and the staff, none of whom speak English, always wear strange looks on their faces and the one woman is tasked with murdering the shit out of the venomous snakes infesting the estate (they’re just vipers! NBD!). Are these red flags? HELL YES THEY ARE.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Blink Twice is a tantalizing, if occasionally uneven blend of Glass Onion, Midsommar, eat-the-rich stuff like Saltburn and Triangle of Sadness, and movies that make fun of rich people’s culinary palates a la The Menu or Flux Gourmet. And it’s of a similar mind to recent female-perspective artsy-genre pieces Love Lies Bleeding and The Substance. Get Out is a clear influence here, too.
Performance Worth Watching: The cast is Blink’s strength: It’s a lot of fun watching Tatum toy with his persona by playing a “nice guy” with some sinister fringes. But Ackie carries this film with all her strength, truly showing her skill and appeal in a project that didn’t squander her talent like I Wanna Dance with Somebody did. And she shares a number of funny, quietly electrifying scenes with Arjona, a stunning talent who was just damn great in Andor and especially Hit Man. Oh, and if there was an awards category for Best Comeback by a Veteran Actress in a Supporting Role, it’d go to Davis for her brief, but hilarious turn here as a Ghislaine Maxwell-type (the Lead Role award would go to Demi Moore for The Substance, natch).
Memorable Dialogue: Sarah has A Bad Feeling About This: “I’m having a great time here. But I also have this feeling like I’m” – pause for a comically long amount of time – “not.”
Sex and Skin: Nothing sexy about the slightly-more-than-implied moments of sexual assault, so consider yourself warned (the film opens with a trigger-warning title card).
Our Take: You will not be surprised in the least that the rich white guys in this movie are awful human beings who might’ve inspired a title change to Gaslight Island (Kravitz’s original title was Pussy Island, but that was nixed for obvious reasons). You therefore could ding Blink Twice for its somewhat predictable plotting and big, bold, punch-in-the-nose approach to feminist-revenge themes, but I’d argue that such a lack of subtlety emerges when the one with something to say is angry about hierarchical and sexual power dynamics and wants to lash out. This movie isn’t a persuasive essay – it’s a fight. You FEEL that punch in the nose, and you might emerge from this movie a little bit bloody. And that’s precisely the point.
Kravitz’s heightened sensibility sells the film as go-for-the-throat satire. She wink-nudges us with an amusing, far-fetched, slightly absurdist premise (why would Frida and Jess drop everything to jet off to wherever with a bunch of strangers? They’re enamored with the lives of the uber-rich, and want to get a taste. Aren’t you, too, at least a little?). She camera, mise-en-scene and sharp edits to amplify the comedy and horror. And she assembles a chemically potent ensemble that’s game for anything – borderline-ridiculous riffs on stereotypes, dark comedy, eye-widening brutality.
The first stretch of the film feels like a slightly too-long uneasy-tease, but once Ackie and Arjona’s characters connect at about the halfway point, it finds its footing as a comically horrific narrative. Some moments are hysterically funny and some are grotesque, searingly so. Kravitz’s most consistent thread is a sense of righteousness that isn’t always 100 percent serious, but it’s serious e-f—ing-nough when it absolutely counts.
Our Call: Blink Twice may be a little bit uneven, but it’s not easily forgotten. More Kravitz behind the camera please. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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