In the opening interview scene of Blink Twice, an inescapably fraught thriller about two women who are whisked away to a beautiful yet remote island that is home to something far more sinister, we come to see just about everything that there is to know about what underpins the film. Yes, there will be revelations to follow that expose new depths of depravity. However, Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut (which originally had the working title of Pussy Island) opens on a man whose capacity for cruelty is already abundantly apparent.
The man is Slater King, played by Channing Tatum in an unsettling (if mostly one-note) performance. He is a tech billionaire currently lying through his teeth about the harm he caused. You can see right through his hollow words, as we all know the world is full of men whose power and wealth can mostly insulate them from any real consequences. The trouble comes as the film peers into this hollowness — often with rather entertaining flair — only to emerge disappointingly empty with few insights about the characters or deeper ideas the movie lays out.
Caught up in all this is Frida, played by an excellent Naomi Ackie of the somewhat thematically linked though more lingering 2016 film Lady Macbeth, whom we meet intently watching that interview with King on her phone. Living in a dingy apartment with her friend and co-worker Jess (Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat), they soon come into contact with King himself after sneaking into a swanky event he's putting on. After hanging with him plus all his friends, he (seemingly spontaneously) invites them to come away to his island. They accept and begin having the time of their lives, partying the days away. Inevitably, things take a dark turn, and the beautiful facade begins to fall apart all around them. Unfortunately, so too do most of the more resonant thematic ideas about violence and abuse.
For much of the film, we are effectively disoriented through the use of some vibrant extreme close-ups and rather sharp quick editing that blurs everything together. It's the type of presentation that upends and unsettles, hinting at a bolder film that rejects coherence in favor of tapping into more disquieting rhythms about the ways violence can suddenly burst free from even the most seemingly ordinary of circumstances. In the sharp eye of cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra (who previously did beautiful work on the terrific The Last Black Man in San Francisco), and the capable hands of editor Kathryn J. Schubert (who helped cut the grippingly tense Green Room), Blink Twice is best when it feels like a snapshot of a world coming apart.
However, while this nightmare is generally well put together, the film is unable to give it the full emotional or thematic heft it is reaching for. Though similar in some regards to a variety of haunting modern horror films from Get Out to Midsommar, Blink Twice keeps blinking in the face of anything substantive, leaving a sense that something is getting lost each time it does so. Kravitz and her co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum (High Fidelity) have much to say, though they fall short when it comes to expressing these ideas and the characters themselves with any real depth.
Though Ackie is quite good, there is a fundamental distance between the audience and Frida that never gets closed. She has some traits here and there, though we get little insight into who she really is. A late twist on top of another twist is haphazardly thrown in to sort of explain this away, but it doesn't resonate. Even when something befalls Jess, the impact is fleeting. We just see her essentially get replaced by the similarly underdeveloped Sarah, played by Adria Arjona, who again does the most with an underwritten character after already doing so in this year's Hit Man. She very nearly saves the whole experience through sheer charisma alone. Almost... but not quite.
While it's got bigger ideas that it gestures toward, the film feels destined to fade away as soon as it ends. No matter how many striking pictures it takes, Blink Twice won't last very long at all.
Blink Twice
