Over a close-up of a turtle, ominous sound design builds at such a deep frequency that the walls of a press-screening room in Beverly Hills began rattling. Once the shaking stopped and it’s realized this was not the third Los Angeles earthquake in as many weeks, the setup of Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice is doled out in impressively economical fashion: Rent is due for Frida (Naomie Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat). Rather than pay up and keep the wheels spinning in their going-nowhere-fast lives, Frida has a plan: retrieving a hidden wad of bills, she purchases gowns so she and Jess can crash a fancy gala after their waitress shifts end. Looking suitably glamorous, the two ignore a security guard’s insistence they stay away from tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) and his entourage. A meet-cute between Frida and Slater ensues––the entire setup straight out of a Disney (or Disney Channel) movie.
This anything-is-possible opening points to the first of several prescient observations that Kravitz (who co-writes with E.T. Feigenbaum) might’ve gleaned from growing up with celebrity parents and from becoming a star herself. Frida and Jess’ ability to infiltrate Slater’s shielded bubble so quickly suggests that, in a world largely driven by money and fame, beauty is the ultimate currency, able to break through economic barriers with ease.
The next morning Frida and Jess find themselves on a private jet to Slater’s island, where Blink Twice’s narrative settles down. This is the same island we learned earlier from Frida’s Instagram toilet-scrolling that Slater retreated to after a slew of #MeToo allegations. Slater’s public apology is so wooden, so blatantly perfunctory that it’s hard to believe anyone––even a romantic like Frida––would buy it. Maybe she’s convinced by the subsequent scroll of media headlines that paint Slater as a changed man––an indictment of a media eager to carry water for high-powered publicists with damage control for their star clients in sight. While strolling around the perfectly manicured island compound, Slater talks up therapy’s benefits and earnestly asks Frida if she’s in therapy. She responds frankly that she believes therapy is bullshit and for self-indulgent people who wish to feel better about their shitty behavior. This hot take points to a more provocative version of the film, one that recalls its original working title, Pussy Island. Visible only in glimpses, Blink Twice is at its best on these fringes, where Kravitz and Feigenbaum’s observations on the media, fame, and wealth peak through.
Life on Slater’s island is intoxicating––a surreal routine of pool parties, psychedelic drug use, bottomless champagne, and Michelin-level food prepared by Cody (a miscast Simon Rex as a gourmand). Adam Newport-Berra’s slick cinematography and the relentless sound design match with quick cuts to mirror the aesthetics of modern commercials and music videos. The overcooked sound design seems to exist solely for its own gratification, appearing to ask: if the crackling of Slater’s vape isn’t dialed to 11, can we be sure a sound engineer did any work on the project at all? I’m only curious when every film became Park Chan-wook’s Stoker.
As players in a single-location ensemble piece, many of these peripheral characters are less memorable than they might’ve been with a better script and direction. Haley Joel Osment as a bitter, washed-up star is a savvy bit of meta-casting without much to do. Liz Caribel as Camilla is even less memorable, overshadowed by best friend Heather (newcomer Trew Mullen), the female version of the burned-out stoner whose entire personality revolves around smoking fat blunts every day. Heather might be a one-note portrayal, but this is a very real person anyone living on the West Coast has encountered.
Geena Davis is Blink Twice’s standout as Stacy, Slater’s high-strung assistant, whose hyper-competency in her demanding role is masked by an outward bumbling around, frequently dropping things. Fresh off Linklater’s Hit Man, Adria Arjona fares fine as the tough-as-nails star of a Survivor-type show in which bikini-clad women are pitted against one another. In another moment in which Blink Twice ponders an unpopular stance, she laments the show’s cancellation (in both senses) due to its perceived sexist “exploitation” of its stars––an exploitation she accepted for what it granted her. Frida’s starry-eyed dreamer exists in a naive bubble of unadulterated infatuation with the handsome-yet-bland Slater. Woefully underwritten, Ackie does just enough with her frequent close-ups to grant the slightest impression there might be more under the surface of her starstruck exterior. It’s an uphill battle Ackie fights admirably.
Blink Twice joins a string of recent films in the “everything is not what it seems under the perfect surface” genre: Get Out, Don’t Worry Darling, and Midsommar, all themselves recalling The Stepford Wives. Understanding its placement in the well-worn genre, audience’s suspicions are aroused immediately by the idyllic island setup. Onscreen this suspicion originates from those around Frida, including Jess, whose initial “I’m scared” admission comes seemingly from nowhere––it’s relatively early into a stay that’s largely been fun and games up to that point. The narrative alternates between scenes that exist purely to move the plot forward (character motivations be damned) and increasingly dull ones featuring that endless cavalcade of poolside hangouts and fancy dinners––neither particularly enjoyable to experience. The limitations of the single location grows more noticeable as the story proceeds. Late in the film, when the boys go out on the water for some deep-sea fishing, we are dying to go there with them if only for a brief change of scenery. Perspective sadly sticks with the girls back at the villa.
Any Blink Twice writeup would be incomplete without mention of Jess’ yellow lighter, which first makes an appearance in the opening act just before the gala. A conversation surrounding a lighter is an odd thing to include early in a film, and so we immediately register the object’s importance for later. But then, as if not trusting our ability to stow that information away, the yellow lighter pops up again and again. I’ve never seen a clue so openly choreographed before. The effect when the object’s ultimate purpose is revealed becomes an exhaled “Finally…” rather than an excitable “Aha!”
Blink Twice is further undone by a routine third act where frenemies Sarah and Frida put aside their competitiveness in courting Slater and band together to fight back. In a tense dinner scene, the two must play dumb, keeping horrific revelations they unveiled earlier that day quiet. But the actresses do such a good job portraying the quiet terror in their expressions that there’s almost zero chance Slater and company wouldn’t immediately clock their strange behavior. But that doesn’t happen because that’s not where the story needs to go.
An actor’s charm has limits, and Tatum seems to reach his here. In HBO’s Silicon Valley, Mike Judge recognized the different personalities this weird industry attracts and had fun making them all interact. Tatum’s Slater King is a mixed bag of a few types: he’s a little hippie cult leader, a little bro tech lord, but he never fully embodies any in a memorable way. Likewise, Levon Hawke as cryptocurrency wunderkind Lucas offers little insight or laughs into that world. A final-act monologue revealing Slater to be your typical, angry 21st-century male plays as too easy, too trite, and it becomes clear Kravitz and Feigenbaum never possessed a clear handle on who Slater is or what makes him tick.
Blink Twice’s final sequence includes one last twist I won’t spoil other than to say it tweaks “if you can’t beat them, join them” to an adjacent “if you can’t beat them, become them.” This surprise ending is so cynical, so out-of-nowhere that it can only elicit an eye-roll while it seeks applause. It’s a cheap trick, a last-ditch effort to distract from a flimsy narrative arc, flat line-readings, repetitive middle section, rushed final act, and clues choreographed to such a degree they become laughable.
Blink Twice opens in theaters on Friday, August 23.