'Blink Twice' Review

Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut is loaded with so many symbols, clues, and hidden messages that the rapid-fire nature of their delivery might make you miss them if you blink (sorry, the joke just wrote itself). It’s the mark of a confident storyteller, someone who can transfer their vision onto the silver screen and trust the audience to go along for the ride even though they never get to play with a deck. To give us some credit, Kravitz’s symbolism and structure heavily mirror recent thrillers such as Get Out and The Royal Hotel, so the mysteries surrounding the plot become much simpler to solve once you identify that this is an equivalent equation, a delicious copycat nonetheless.

“Be invisible” is the order Frida (Naomi Ackie) receives every day at her job as a waitress for a catering company. It’s something she’s unfortunately become an expert at, first seen sitting on the toilet of her rundown apartment as her roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) asks if she has half of the rent. A coincidence could be her ticket to a better life, as recently #MeToo canceled tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), is the prime benefactor of the charity event she’s catering. It’s all part of his apology tour, with the reason for his cancellation never being revealed, an omission that Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum feel that we can fill with our own doomscrolling mentality.

The meet-cute between Frida and Slater is a rousing success, so much so that he invites her to his private island with some of his friends. Phones are strictly prohibited, replaced with endless shots of tequila, lavishly prepared meals by the seemingly brainwashed staff, and a drug that takes you to another world. It’s a perfect vacation… almost too perfect. Days and nights begin to blur together, with Frida and the other women’s memories starting to fade the longer they stay.

The casting of Christian Slater, Simon Rex, and Haley Joel Osment as Slater’s entourage immediately rings the alarms that nothing good is ever going to happen on the island. Each of them are “nice guys” on the outside, asking the women if they’re having a good time and constantly snapping photos to prove how much of allies they are. Roberto Bonelli’s production design is eerily perfect as well, the bold red house being the center point where all the lush green grass converges. The visual connections to Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery remain strong as everyone is dressed in their finest whites, with DP Adam Newport-Berra always placing the background just out of focus and filled with unknown entities. 

The editing by Kathryn J. Schubert may be the most stylized tool in Kravitz’s arsenal, with a mixture of quick cuts matched with startling string scratches and long takes that drip-feed through the villa. It can sometimes be a little too showy for its own good, with Kravitz overplaying her hand and underestimating her audience. It’s propulsive once the cork pops off the wine bottle, with quite a few scenes of brutality to match what’s been lurking underneath.

Kravitz’s stature as an actor may have been why she was able to assemble such a stacked ensemble. She directs them all impeccably, with Ackie and Adria Arjona (seen this year in Hit Man) being the standout leaders. They’ve put themselves into an “adapt or die” situation, and the actors are in lockstep with the material at every turn. Rex, Slater, and Osment don’t do much adapting to the material, which isn’t a bad thing considering their presence already sells their character dynamics. Tatum leads us into the darkness with his charm, his vape pen and holistic views on therapy building up a “crypto bro” aura to mask his true intentions. Kyle MacLachlan and Geena Davis suffer from the number of actors on display, with the pair always feeling relatively insignificant.

Even with all the devilish debauchery at play, fun is still the name of the game with Blink Twice. It’s meant to be a thriller that has you gripping the seat and jolting into the arms of the person sitting next to you. Kravitz wants you to be yelling “I knew it!” with each new plot twist, a task that is sometimes a little easier than it should be. There’s a lot of satisfaction to be had in that, and also in seeing a person reach a new rung as an artist.