Blink Twice
Frida (Naomi Ackie, "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody"), who shares an apartment with her fellow catering assistant Jess (Alia Shawkat), sits on their toilet watching tech billionaire Slater King’s (Channing Tatum) apology video for past behavior right before working his latest tech gala. She’s co-opted rent money for slinky matching red and blue dresses for she and Jess to crash Slater’s after party and after managing to get his attention, nabs them a spur-of-the-moment invite to his private island, legendary for its outrageous parties. They’ll both be pinching themselves over their good fortune until one of them thinks to “Blink Twice.”
Laura's Review: C
For her feature film debut, cowriter (with E.T. Feigenbaum)/director Zoë Kravitz had an idea on how to flip the script in the male/female power dynamic, but everything about her resulting film is inconsistent and underdeveloped, including her lead character. We never learn what motivates Frida other than a desire to live in the lap of luxury and considering that everyone else in the film is villainous, hedonistic, selfish or clueless, there is absolutely no one worth rooting for.
The group that arrives at Slater’s private playing grounds includes his left and right hand man Vic (Christian Slater), childhood buddy Cody ("Red Rocket's" Simon Rex), Tom (Haley Joel Osment) and wunderkind Lucas (Levon Hawke) along with Sarah (Adria Arjona, "Morbius"), Camilla (Liz Caribel) and Heather (Trew Mullen). Security man Stan (Cris Costa) and all around assistant Stacy (Geena Davis) are the working members of the party while Slater’s therapist Rich (Kyle MacLachlan) will drop in for visits. Slater, a big devotee of therapy, believes that forgetting is a blessing.
While Frida is exploring her room, equipped with a white, flowy evening gown, white bathing suit and a perfume made from a flower native only to this island, she’ll be startled by a maid (María Elena Olivares) who seems to recognize her, repeatedly stating ‘red rabbit.’ All the women appear similarly attired to laze by the pool where Slater continually asks ‘Are you having a good time?’ The women all wear those long, white dresses to dinners created by Cody. After endless glasses of champagne with raspberries, the party drugs come out.
But little things begin to seem strange, like why the other woman always use Jess’s lighter and forget to give it back. When Friday stains her white gown at dinner, she awakens in it the next morning and it is completely clean. Lucas has no idea why he has a black eye at breakfast. But the most disturbing occurrence happens when Jess is bitten by a snake one evening and then is gone in the morning. And when Friday asks Sarah, Camilla and Heather if they’ve seen her, they don’t know who she’s talking about.
Tatum, who is Kravitz’s fiancé, turns on the charm, looking into Frida’s eyes with palpable affection, but all Ackie returns is wide eyes and smiles – there is nothing to suggest why this billionaire would be so besotted with her other than her looks. But the film’s biggest problem is the way its hook has been implemented, something which requires everyone to spritz themselves with that perfume and which seems to have no rhyme nor reason as to when it works or does not. Furthermore, our heroine is clued in to what’s going on when she stumbles across a cache of Polaroids in Slater’s private quarters, documentation of events the man continually professes wanting to forget. The film’s logic is just sloppy.
Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra ("The Last Black Man in San Francisco") gives everything a high fashion magazine sheen, editor Kathryn J. Schubert ("Marjorie Prime") constructing suggestive montages which hint at evil, but costume designer Kiersten Hargroder ("Borat Subsequent Moviefilm") lets the women down with white attire that is neither here nor there, Greek goddess by way of KMart.
Kravitz has come up with an interesting conclusion, one which returns us to where we began, but the road she’s constructed to get there is full of p(l)ot holes.
Amazon MGM releases "Blink Twice" in theaters on 8/23/24.
