Zoë Kravitz had initially titled her directing debut “Pussy Island”, and while it is an infinitely better name than Blink Twice, it also speaks to one of her fundamental issues with the way she presents her movie. It is in concept a fairly severe thriller with a disturbing sexual component and raw social commentary. Yet the attitude displayed by the movie’s tone and rather brash visual language is often comedic, or at the very least satirical, in a manner that can feel inappropriate to the context. And while the track of the climax sort of suggests why this is, it’s still fairly jarring an aesthetic approach for a movie dealing blatantly and ostensibly seriously with issues of sexual assault and misogyny.
It’s the story of a cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) who at an elite function runs into Slater King (Channing Tatum), a billionaire recently caught up in a sexual misconduct scandal who stepped down from his CEO position and has attempted to re-brand his image through public apology. In spite of this, Frida and her roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) accept his invitation for a luxury holiday on his private island with a bunch of his tech bro friends and their girlfriends. But of course after some time of fun, mysterious things start happening on the island, full of its own particular enigmas, with clues to some manipulation of the women’s experiences.
Kravitz comes to this filmmaking endeavour with solid ideas, both in the story and how she intends it to look, but a lack of finesse in how to achieve either. The momentum of the script is rather stilted, our protagonist is barely established before she is thrust without consideration into so exorbitant a situation, merely one short scene existing to set up a theme but without motivation on her part. There is a reveal in the last act that may account for some of these pacing and characterization irregularities, but I'm not convinced Kravitz makes that argument well enough or if it was even intentional. More likely it seems an effect of the style she wishes to present -one that is in your face but all over the place.
For about the first half, this movie is very annoying to watch, primarily due to the awkwardly frenetic editing that feels at times like an attempt to mimic Edgar Wright but without the rhythm or focus (apart from two very strong exceptions). She wants the film to feel a little chaotic, dropping the title card in a flash-cut after the characters arrive on the island, but seems to think the key to this is just constant cuts. For almost an hour barely any shot is sustained for more than ten seconds. And it doesn’t build a sense of mood or tension, many of the individual shots are arbitrary -it’s just an aesthetically pointless attempt at style for its own sake. More often than not it looks incompetent. Does every dialogue scene between two characters have to be conducted strictly shot-reverse shot? And in a fashion that seems to indicate a lot of unusable takes and ADR? Same for the constant use of inserts -why does Kravitz feel the need to cut in two-second shots of the food or a different awkward angle on a character in the midst of an otherwise normally paced scene? That’s not even touching on the rather frequent use of close-ups or the occasional “clever” whip-pans. If the intent is to throw off the audience, it certainly does so, but not in a manner that is in any way conducive to this script. As foreshadowing, it’s irrelevant or ineffective. Just about every technical choice until the point where the story’s tension is such that even an amateur would know to apply a more grounded approach is jarring and utterly distracting.
Even once the film settles into more of a cohesive groove and Kravitz relies a little more on narrative to carry things, it isn’t as smart or interesting as she intends. And tonally she continues to struggle. Her obvious influence appears to be Jordan Peele, and particularly the way that he weaved humour into aspects of the horror of Get Out. But where Peele focused that satirical lens largely on observational material, little interactions that read as both funny and uncomfortable, Kravitz’s approach is more broad. Again, while some of it is flourish, her montage editing of the women drinking and partying and dancing through the night -not to remember what happened in the morning- emphasises silliness in a way that evokes something like Bridesmaids or Girls Trip. And yet the context that we later learn or honestly can even discern by the movie’s other not-so-subtle clues is intrinsically horrifying. And even where some of the truth of the situation is recognized and Frida and others begin to realize they are in danger, Kravitz can’t help diffusing it -like cutting straight from a moment of shocking discovery to instigating another party, or undercutting a moment of suspense where Frida hides from a newly frightful Slater with his unrelated dopey observations on a chair.
Kravitz makes clear perhaps earlier than she should that sexual assault plays a role here, and she simultaneously wants to address it with severity and create the circumstances for an over-the-top revenge rampage. Another movie she seems to have in mind is Ready or Not, at least in terms of its ending -but that movie also didn’t go so far as Blink Twice. To her credit, she does find harrowing ways to evoke the trauma without showing anything explicit, and she does -though in a tacked on way- condemn the easy treatment certain celebrities or powerful individuals get in lieu of accountability, and how hollow mere words are. But at the same time she'll play into Tatum's desirability, disregard narratively and thematically two of her victims, and ultimately impart a shocking notion through her ending that centres the importance of power over the abuse.
It is kind of an ugly point the movie ends on, positing that the abused inevitably become abusers and even insinuating under certain circumstances that it is right. Whatever goodwill Kravitz is able to muster is muted by this. And there is indeed some -I appreciate her apparent enthusiasm to cast once prominent actors now overlooked by the film industry, including Christian Slater, Kyle MacLachlan, Haley Joel Osment, and Geena Davis (whose character track though seems especially disrespectful to Davis). Ackie herself does a pretty good job with the material, and Adria Arjona -as her first ally in investigation- is the performance highlight of the movie. And through a handful of scenes you can see where a stronger movie about gaslighting would be -Kravitz has some good storytelling instincts.
But they aren't enough to counteract the baffling tonal problems, technical distractions, and thematic discomfort left by the end. Blink Twice is a misfire, plain and simple, and I hope if Kravitz continues her career behind the camera, that she is made aware of and learns substantially from this movie's failings.
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