Movie Review: BLINK TWICE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: August 23rd, 2024 / 03:03 AM

BLINK TWICE movie poster | movie poster | ©2024 Amazon MGM Studios

Rating: R
Stars: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Alia Shawkat, Christian Slater, Adria Arjona, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Liz Caribel, Levon Hawke, Trew Mullen, Geena Davis, Kyle McLachlan, Chris Costa, Maria Elena Olivares
Writers: Zoë Kravitz & E.T. Feigenbaum
Director: Zoë Kravitz
Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios
Release Date: August 23, 2024

“Blink twice if I’m in danger,” Frida (Naomi Ackie) jokingly says to new acquaintance Rich (Kyle McLachlan), who obligingly blinks twice.

Since most of us have seen the trailer, we know that Frida is kidding, but Rich is only pretending to be responding in kind.

Here’s the set-up. Frida and her best friend/roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) are cater-waiters with a horrible boss. They are about to work a fundraising event honoring tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum).

Slater has retired from public view since some unspecified (to us) incidents that he’s apologized for publicly. He’s said on the news that he’s enjoying the simple life on a private island he purchased.

Frida remembers locking eyes with Slater at last year’s gala. She has such a crush on the man that, this year, she’s devised a plan to meet him. It succeeds beyond Frida’s wildest hopes. Slater winds up inviting Frida and Jess to accompany him and his friends on his private plane back to the island.

Slater’s posse includes his private chef and best friend Cody (Simon Rex), business advisor Vic (Christian Slater), resentful Tom (Haley Joel Osment), Cody’s girlfriend Sarah (Adria Arjona) – who doesn’t seem to actually like Cody very much – astrology app designer Camilla (Liz Caribel), potential up-and-coming exec Lucas (Levon Hawke), and hard-partying Heather (Trew Mullen). Slater’s chief assistant Stacy (Geena Davis) isn’t part of the group, but she’s always around.

At first, the tropical island is the site of Frida’s dreams. There’s a spacious tree-filled compound, where everyone has their own comfortable rooms. There are meals, liquor, and specially-concocted drugs. Everyone dresses in white (clothes are provided).

There are, of course, some odd aspects to all this. One of these is that while Slater is clearly attracted to Frida, and behaves flirtatiously, he never asks her to bed. Another is Slater’s therapy with Rich – Slater describes this in vague terms to Frida, but it sounds like it has some singular goals. Then there are the nosebleeds and inexplicable injuries that various individuals exhibit.

Finally, there’s Jess, who cannot articulate her reasons, but feels something is very wrong.

This reviewer doesn’t know how to continue without at least a mini-spoiler, so don’t read further if you are a hardy soul who doesn’t need trigger warnings and doesn’t care to know more.

For everyone else, BLINK TWICE bears a similarity to films like PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN and the 2019 remake of BLACK CHRISTMAS (and sort of DON’T WORRY, DARLING), and TV series like SWEET/VICIOUS, in that the plot pivots on similar actions and responses. There’s a whole other conversation to be had about this as a pop culture story mechanism, but we’ll leave that aside for here.

Director Zoë Kravitz, who co-wrote the script with E.T. Feigenbaum, creates what at least those of us who have never been to a private island can believe as ultra-wealth masquerading as meaningful normality. Furnishings are beautiful, but not ostentatious; the buildings look suitably timeless and rustic. Kravitz also achieves some striking images, such as when the women engage in their nightly run across the lawn like figures in a Greek myth.

Kravitz and lead performer Ackie, along with Shawkat and Arjona, keep us very much on the side of the protagonists. We are invested in their well-being.

Tatum keeps us guessing, Caribel has an affecting moment of drunken love for her newfound friends, and Maria Elena Olivares makes a strong impression with not a lot of screen time as a housekeeper.

The filmmakers seem to be going for a metaphor here about, broadly, why people stay in unhealthy relationships. The arguments are intriguing, but they are upstaged by the sci-fi elements, which give rise to so many questions that they threaten to derail the proceedings.

Why does X work this way, but not that way, and how does a certain character figure out how to make it work yet another way? Why is Frida so smitten with Slater from the start? How and when is it decided that people are allowed to do certain things, but not others? Why are the filmmakers using boa constrictors to play venomous snakes (constrictors aren’t venomous)?

Because these issues arise alongside what we’re actually supposed to be asking – how did Frida get that scar, what does “Red Rabbit” signify, what’s in the filing cabinets – the viewers wind up chasing our own tails to an extent. By the end, we’re more spent than gratified.

BLINK TWICE is worth seeing for the conversations it is likely to provoke, for some memorable visuals, and for the particulars of its subgenre. It does not, however, wholly succeed as a structured thriller.

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