“I forgot to remember to forget,” sang Elvis Presley in 1955, and similar mental gymnastics are required to figure out what’s actually happening — or has been happening — in this upscale twisty-turny horror thriller. But although it raises serious and intriguing questions about hot-button issues and features a top-notch cast that couldn’t possibly be bettered, Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut winds up leaving us to ponder more moral conundrums than it can properly answer in the format of high-end genre film. The premise is a very good and timely one (think of a female-fronted Get Out), but the script doesn’t exactly follow suit, taking the well-trodden M. Night Shyamalan route to its big reveal.
One of its plus points is the casting of the excellent Naomi Ackie as Frida, a stoic but dispirited gig-economy hospitality worker (is there any other kind?) who spends her evenings doom-scrolling on her mobile and wondering how to make the rent. Her gloom lifts somewhat at the news that millionaire tech bro Slater King (Channing Tatum) is going to be at one of her events, to the extent that she is warned not to be as forward with the talent as she has been in the past. Frida is not perturbed, even though she has seen his Reels confession on Instagram, apologizing for his “regrettable behavior”. What this ever actually entailed will be left to the viewer’s imagination, but we do learn that King has decided to step down as CEO and spend time thinking about what he did while serving penance on his private luxury island. “I have chickens,” he offers as proof.
Frida has a soft spot for Slate, but she also seems to be a magnet for men with fragile egos, as her needle-sharp best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) tries to tell her: “You’re not a human phone charger,” she snaps. “Have some self-respect.” Both women, however, get giddy in the company of Slater King, and matters accelerate when Frida snaps a high heel, bringing her to his attention. There’s a cute Cinderella moment, and suddenly the pair are deep in conversation, even after the event has obviously ended. King has to return to his island paradise, but at the last minute he circles back to Frida. “Do you guys wanna come?”
This question is perhaps the essence of Blink Twice; that spur-of-the-moment decision that can go any which way. Being broke, and flattered, they do wanna go, and their introduction to the high life — along with three other similarly random women plucked to balance out King’s inner circle of men — is more than they could have imagined. Time stops. Every day is a holiday, with endless refills of champagne, gourmet dinners, and psychedelic drugs on tap. Jess is cautious. “Don’t you think it’s weird?” she wonders. “I don’t think it’s weird,” says Frida. “I think it’s… rich.” Soon, however, the novelty wears off, and when Jess disappears, Frida wakes up to danger she might have put herself in.
The not-so-subtle twist is that King hasn’t changed his “regrettable” ways and has simply found a way to continue along the same path without caring about it. He rejects therapy outright and thinks trauma shouldn’t be dwelt on. “Forgetting is a gift,” he says, smugly, which is as big clue as any to what’s about to unravel.
The core idea of the film is a very strong one, and it concerns not just the power balance between men and women but the support structures that spring up between women as a direct result. It would be impossible to go any further into the plot without using the phrase “toxic masculinity”, which is a shame because Kravitz’s film is really onto something until it goes flat-out into familiar revenge-o-matic territory. This is where the actors come in: Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Haley Joe Osment and Kyle MacLachlan (in a glorified cameo) really sell the sense of false security, but no one does it better than Geena Davis, who, as King’s slavish personal assistant Stacy, totally nails the part of the invisible woman that has known all along what was happening but won’t speak up.
The reign of a very disgraced, now imprisoned Hollywood producer springs to mind, as does the clandestine sex-trafficking world of the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, but melding those two modern-day villains is never going to get very far when you’ve cast Channing Tatum. It’s a brave role for him to take, and he is certainly very convincing, but ironically, Blink Twice feels just as in awe of his presence as Frida is. The ending might be cathartic, and could even be construed as empowering, but it’s a cop-out that falls way short of what it could have been.
Title: Blink Twice
Director: Zoë Kravitz
Screenwriter: Zoë Kravitz, E.T. Feigenbaum
Cast: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Christian Slate, Alia Shawkat, Simon Rex, Geena Davis, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan
Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios / Warner Bros
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hr 43 min
