Blink Twice

Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) are friends and roommates who work together as cocktail waitresses at an event with famous billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) in attendance. After a brief meet-cute where Frida’s heel snaps and she comes tumbling to the ground, with King there to lend a charming hand, he whisks her and Jess off to a private island. While they’re there, reality no longer exists, they’re in a permanent state of vacation. They lounge and eat during the day and then spend the evenings consuming hallucinogenic drugs. Wake up the next day, rinse and repeat, so on and so forth in perpetuity.

Along for the extended break from reality are a number of King’s friends and acquaintances, like Vic (Christian Slater), a photographer, and Sarah (Adria Arjona, a reality TV show star). The island’s temporary inhabitants get to know each other better as the days pass, whether lounging by the pool or running around, howling at the moon in a drug frenzy at night. The honeymoon doesn’t last long before the island’s insidious secret and King’s true nature are revealed. The blissful location becomes a geographically isolated location of terror, without a phone or radio signal to reach mainland civilization for help. Frida finds herself in a fight for her very life against King and his yes-man cronies.

Channing Tatum, as Slater King, shows him in rare form. I think that Tatum is a good actor, but he’s excellent here as a slimy, duplicitous billionaire who can turn on a dime from phony-charming to cool-as-a-cucumber villainy. Naomie Ackie, as Frida, gives her performance just the right amount of pathos, as the audience’s surrogate, to convey the horror she’s in. Adria Arjona, as Sarah, steals the movie and runs away with it. She’s terrific in every scene that she’s in, or whatever the script calls for from her. Sometimes she’s the movie’s resident badass, sometimes she’s the comic relief, and she can handle every assignment with flexibility and grace.

It's too bad that the talented, charming leads are handed such a lackluster script that’s been handled with such clunky direction from Zoë Kravitz in her debut. Somewhere out there, there’s a good—maybe even great—movie about this kind of evil that men do, floating in the ether of humanity’s collective intelligence. This bizarre satire that’s Love Island meets Jeffrey Epstein ain’t it. It’s simply not enough to present insidious behavior and allow the horror to make a statement by speaking for itself, because in Blink Twice, it doesn’t. The film’s thesis never goes beyond its barest premise, with no interest in actually exploring the evil that men are capable of.

Before the film starts, there is a trigger warning that Blink Twice features scenes of sexual violence and to consider your limits before watching the film. Understanding how PTSD response works, I’m not opposed to trigger warnings, particularly when it comes to surviving sexual violence. My issue is how performative the warning comes, with everything else that follows in the film. We’re subjected to barely-there caricatures of women in the background who only come to life to (perfunctorily) serve the plot as mere victims. We’re also subjected to a repugnant kind of “otherism” in its portrayal of Indigenous people that populate the island, who are so thinly drawn and fetishistically photographed that they only remotely resemble human beings.

Worst yet, as a narrative, the film is excruciatingly dull in its set-up. It takes forever for Blink Twice to get going and its setup is nothing more than nearly an hour of “everything is great” before deciding, “Actually, everything is not great”. The way it switches gears in its techniques to gravitate toward tension instead of languid, plotless inconsequence feels completely arbitrary. It's as if the filmmakers received a note that this was supposed to be a thriller and they had to fulfill that contractual promise and deliver the good.

Billy Wilder once said that if you let the audience do the math and add up two plus two to equal four, they’ll love you for life. The screenplay, written by Kravitz and E.T. Feigenbaum will not allow the audience to draw any conclusions on their own. If you see something that might become important later, the movie will take great pains to remind you, again and again, until it finally comes to fruition. Seeing a prop appear again, with significance tied to it, is rewarding. Seeing it appear fifteen times before having meaning assigned to it, is maddening.

Blink Twice is a satire that forgets to satirize. It challenges men who are in a position of power without ever directly challenging them. It says a mouthful without actually saying a thing. It’s the kind of toothless film you wish had the courage of its convictions, but as it dissolves into a by-the-numbers suspenser with our heroines hiding in the shadows, clutching knives, we can only weep for what could have been. What a disappointment.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Blink Twice makes its way to Blu-ray in a single-disc release in a standard case. Inside the case is a slip containing a code for digital redemption. The film is pressed on a BD50 disc, and there was no slipcover. 

While the film itself is frustratingly uneven, its cinematography and transfer onto Blu-ray is excellent. Adam Newport-Berra, who also shot the A24 film The Last Black Man in San Francisco bathes Blink Twice in a golden, dreamy light. Throughout, it’s a very striking and colorful film, marked with deep and sharp contrasts. I watched Blink Twice on a 65” OLED and it looked exquisite, particularly in nighttime sequences, or lowlight sequences that have the appearance of only being lit by candlelight or a fire. Blink Twice in 1080p looked attractive enough that it made me wish that it was being released physically in 4K disc instead of just digital streaming. While I think the Blu-ray looks excellent in its current form, its style, and overall visual aesthetic is its best asset. Still, judged on its own merits, I can’t imagine Blink Twice looking any better on Blu-ray than it does here.

Blink Twice comes with a DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround sound mix and English descriptive audio in Dolby Digital. The 5.1 surround mix is not particularly immersive, which is unfortunate given its island locale, but the sounds are quite well layered, always favoring dialogue clarity. This is a very front-heavy soundstage, but the musical score by Chanda Dancy and frequent needle drops from funk legends like James Brown make their way to the rear speakers. Louder effects like gunshots or echoing yells through a corridor will make their way to the rear speakers, but there aren’t a lot of ambient effects that you’d expect, like wind rustling through jungle leaves, the chirrup of insects, etc. It all feels rather sparse.

There are no special features to be found on this disc. Fans looking to deepen their understanding and appreciation won’t have any audio commentaries or cast/crew featurettes to make their way through.

Blink Twice is a disappointing film for a lot of reasons. It tackles a story that requires guts, rage, and a willingness to go to uncomfortable, dark places with its audience. Instead, it plumbs those depths, barely beneath the surface, with a great deal of trepidation. And it fails at even the modest task of mocking amoral billionaires. Kravitz’s next film deserves a confidence and courage she couldn’t muster for this outing. While the video is excellent and the audio is quite good (if lacking a bit of a punch), it offers no special features for fans. Blink Twice is Worth A Look, but maybe stream it first before taking the blind-buy plunge.