Blink Twice (2024)
Directed by Zoë Kravitz
Written by Kravitz and E.T. Feigenbaum
If we remember “Blink Twice” in the future — by which I mean five or ten years from now — it will be for two reasons. First, it’s the directorial review of Zoë Kravitz, a very respectable one, really, and I’ll give due weight to Kravitz’s achievement in due time. But in addition to that milestone, I hope it will also be remembered for being a breakthrough film for an actor I didn’t know about until now: Alia Shawkat. Remember her name.
Shawkat, a 35-year-old actor with the comic grace of Judy Holliday and the gravitas of Julianne Moore, has already had a lengthy TV career, best known for a long-running role as Maeby Fünke in the series “Arrested Development” and for starring in HBO’s “Search Party.” Here she plays Jess, the best friend of the main character. Since “Blink Twice” is a mystery thriller — think “Glass Onion,” only the billionaire is Jeffrey Epstein — she disappears halfway through. Before that, she fills in the best-friend role adequately, but so have thousands of chunky, wise-cracking actors. What she does brilliantly is to physically express, through subtle shifts in posture and facial expression, her character’s unconscious knowledge of what goes on after dark on the island.
To back up a bit: Channing Tatum plays a cancelled billionaire named Slater — a confusing character name, because the actor Christian Slater plays his right-hand man — who has gone through accusations, an enormous settlement, a leave of absence, and an apology tour of the daytime talk shows. We never find out what the allegations were that drove him to resign as CEO and etc.; we just know he’s back. Our main character, Frida, is a little obsessed with him, and schemes to sneak into a gala banquet with her roommate-sidekick Jess (Shawkat) to meet him.
The ease with which they accomplish this goal, with an immediate invite to Slater’s private island in the bargain, is the first clue that something is fishy, but we don’t realize that for at least an hour later. By that time viewers have gorged on sybaritic sequences of pool lounging, drug-taking, hilarity and buffoonery, especially among Slater’s male hangers-on (including Haley Joel Osment, who seems doomed by his stature and unfortunate beard to repeat the role of a pathetic rich loser over and over again in pictures). Slater keeps asking the women “Are you having a good time?” and the more he repeats it, the more sinister it sounds. The days and nights fade into a bleary loop for both the characters and the viewer; I failed to count the number of diurnal periods, but there are almost a month’s worth before shit starts getting real.
The viewer will recognize the similarity with “Glass Onion,” which has very much the same setting, the same unquestioning beneficiaries of luxurious resort-like food and lodging, the same almost invisible staff. That 2022 movie was more of a comedy-mystery, and “Blink Twice” is more thriller-mystery. The difference is that in the former movie, murder was only a game the characters played.
The only discouraging word we hear during the first half of the movie is from Shawkat’s character, saying that something feels off about their experience. But as I indicated before, she knows — the host and all his guests know — what goes on in the shadows, but their memories of the nights are erased by the time they wake each day. She is the one character to express her unease physically, in the most subtle shifts of movement and voice. And I could not take my eyes off her.
When Jess disappears, Frida is the only one to notice — indeed, to remember that there was a woman named Jess among them at all, and only the day before. This puts Frida in line for some typical gaslighting: Jess’s bedroom, adjacent to Frida’s, has become a dusty storage room, and her insistence that her friend had been present and was now missing is met with looks of fake concern and responses of “Are you OK?” Only Jess’s name written on a lighter the women keep passing around testifies to her existence.
I’ll keep this part of the review spoiler-free. But you can imagine part of what happens: Frida does a Nancy Drew and finds evidence of the method by which Slater erases memories; she also finds — or, really, is given — an antidote to the drug. This is courtesy of a bruja character1 who is, supposedly, a maid at the private resort (the only one, it seems).
Before I pause, I want to say that “Blink Twice” does contain many comic moments. Some of these seem out of place, like the warning code word that Frida and one of the other women, Sarah (Adria Arjona) — like Frida, her memories now restored by the bruja-dispensed antidote — agree on. While Frida is snooping in Slater’s room, Sarah is to shout FAT BLUNTS if Slater approaches. It breaks the tension a bit at a time when the movie probably wants to ratchet the tension up. But it didn’t spoil the scene, and overall Kravitz does an excellent job of directing a thriller and leavening it with comic touches.
Below the picture, SPOILERS — when our program continues.
Spoilers follow.
What goes on at night is never fully and clearly shown or described. What we see are flashes of scenes, many of them less than a second long, three or four seconds at most. But what I understood is that each night all of the characters take a few drops of a potion, supplied by Slater, said to contain psilocybin and MDMA. Then the women are seized— some running and pursuit seems to be part of the game — and brutalized. Again, whether they are raped is not shown at all, but it’s hard to imagine anything else being the point. This would explain why, despite everyone taking these drugs night after night, the partying that is shown never becomes an orgy. It’s all fun and games until the hunt takes place, apparently.
Some viewers might feel frustration with the ambiguous strategy taken by the film, but when the movie was over and the viewer has been given to understand everything else, I sort of admired both the lack of sex and of rape scenes. I think Kravitz is really asking us: Why do you feel you need to see these things? Must I shoot rape scenes, must I subject the performers to that? You understand perfectly what is going on.
Like real-life victims of sexual assault who have been drugged and emerge with scant memories of what took place, these victims don’t remember. One of the film’s interesting twists is that the men don’t remember either, so that the next morning everything goes on as before, complete with Slater asking everyone if they’re having a good time.
Once Frida, Sarah, and the remaining women take the antidote and remember what they’ve been subjected to, the movie takes another surprising twist: The women launch a revenge-killing spree. This is satisfying for the viewer, though no one survives the subsequent bloodbath except Frida and Sarah. I would rather have had the final girls be Frida and Jess, but in fact it’s Jess’s disappearance that is the turning point in the whole movie. Each morning is like the one before, but the morning that Jess fails to turn up breaks the cycle and spurs Frida to action.
At the end, with almost everyone else dead, Channing Tatum gets to do acting. Mocking his public repentance for his previous and still unknown bad deeds, he recites the apology to Frida while she’s tied up. Repeating the words “I’m sorry” over and over, his voice loses its sarcastic tone and becomes unhinged; he seems to be apologizing not for his actions on the island, but to some ur-figure.
I see I’ve failed to mention one small but important character. Geena Davis plays Slater’s sister and assistant; she is loopy and inefficient, and Slater seems to have difficulty even being civil with her when they interact. Toward the end, she reveals to Frida that she and Slater both suffered sexual assault as children. So when Slater loses it, we hear his unhinged repetitions of “I’m sorry” not as a sardonic denial that he’s really sorry for any of his actions, but as a hysterical attempt to placate the father who is abusing him.
I regretted this moment in the film, because by this point — almost the end of the movie — I didn’t want his character to have a sympathetic moment. I felt this monologue was mainly an effort to satisfy Tatum, or his agent, to give Tatum some scenery to chew.
And then, viewers are denied seeing his character, the villain, get killed. I can’t see any other way to understand it than as Kravitz continuing to subvert the conventions of thrillers. If so, it’s an honorable gesture. But there is a reason movies show the death of the villain — it’s called catharsis. Instead of the villain’s death, in the last scene he has become neutered (metaphorically if not literally), and exists only in the shadow of Frida, who has taken his place in his business empire. A bit like the ending of “Poor Things,” in which the Mark Ruffalo character has become (this time literally) a dog.
All in all, an admirable movie, and it couldn’t have been a cheap one, either. So I wonder why “Blink Twice” was practically dumped into theaters at the end of August with no advance — I didn’t see a poster or a trailer during the month, and only learned of the film when I saw the listing on showtimes.com. Despite the lack of publicity, you should see it. The revenge spree at the end is well worth you time — that, and (let me say her name once more) Alia Shawkat. Remember it.
One of the most annoying things about Frida is that not only the housekeeper/bruja but the groundskeepers are all Latino, and not only does Frida not seem to understand that they don’t speak English but she doesn’t speak a single word of Spanish.