Blink Twice review – right­eous fury in paradise

The para­dox­i­cal nature of mem­o­ry means we are at once hyper­aware of its fal­li­bil­i­ty and yet con­vinced of its stur­di­ness. We trust our mem­o­ries to tell us who we are and where we came from – but we also know that mem­o­ry is slip­pery and sub­ject to change. The human brain tends to block out trau­mat­ic events and what is fact in one person’s mind may sin­cere­ly be recalled as fic­tion in anoth­er. Yet at our most pri­mal, we learn what to fear and what to embrace through lived expe­ri­ence. We depend on our mem­o­ries to keep us safe. Who can we trust if we can’t trust ourselves?

This ques­tion has tak­en on par­tic­u­lar per­ti­nence in the sev­en years since MeToo rocked Hol­ly­wood, with accounts of endem­ic sex­u­al abuse in the film indus­try sub­ject to the same scruti­ny many vic­tims know all too well: What were you wear­ing? Had you been drink­ing? Did you flirt with them? Did you say no? Did you fight back? Why didn’t you fight back? Are you sure it was rape? To be a vic­tim of sex­u­al assault is to be asked to bare your soul, to strip naked and sub­ject your­self to pub­lic scruti­ny. If you’re any­thing but the ide­al sym­pa­thet­ic vic­tim, for­get about it. And then, at the end of it, you prob­a­bly won’t get jus­tice any­way. Maybe it’s best to for­get after all.

“For­get­ting is a gift,” Tech mogul Slater King (Chan­ning Tatum) assures Fri­da (Nao­mi Ack­ie) after men­tion­ing his own trau­mat­ic child­hood and that he can’t remem­ber very much about the first few years of his life. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, and on his pri­vate island where cham­pagne flows freely and every hour is hap­py hour, it’s a phone-and-frown-free zone. For Fri­da it’s a dream come true. She’s miles away from her dingy apart­ment and dead-end wait­ress­ing job, par­ty­ing in par­adise with her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) and a gag­gle of new gal pals, includ­ing Heather (Trew Mullen) Camil­la (Liz Cari­bel) and Sarah (Adria Arjona). Most excit­ing of all is her ongo­ing flir­ta­tion with King him­self, a sen­si­tive-seem­ing ​“changed man” fol­low­ing some sort of pub­lic scan­dal that hangs on the film’s periph­ery – rem­i­nis­cent of the way the rich and pow­er­ful seem to nev­er be far from a redemp­tion arc.

King sur­rounds him­self with men who look, think and act like him, from his old friends Cody (Simon Rex), Vic (Chris­t­ian Slater) and Tom (Hay­ley Joel Osment) to his mentee, the wide-eyed wun­derkind Lucas (Lev­on Hawke) – they’re all vari­a­tions on a theme, bois­ter­ous and brag­gado­cious, here for a good time not a long time. The only women on staff are Slater’s slight­ly fraz­zled assis­tant Sta­cy (Geena Davis) who scur­ries around fix­ing gift bags and mov­ing fur­ni­ture on her boss’s whim, and the indige­nous house­keep­er (María Ele­na Oli­vares, cred­it­ed as ​“Badass Maid”) who speaks no Eng­lish apart from say­ing ​“Red Rab­bit” over and over when she meets Frida.

That’s the first ref­er­ence to The Shin­ing, clear­ly a core text for Kravitz, and let’s be hon­est – there are worse direc­tors to crib from than Kubrick. The idyl­lic hacienda’s (which is a real hotel locat­ed just out of Meri­da, Mex­i­co, by the way) red façade and care­ful sym­me­try evoke mem­o­ries of The Overlook’s aus­tere archi­tec­ture, and then there’s the iso­la­tion tout­ed as a pos­i­tive before com­mon sense returns from a brief vacation.

Hol­ly­wood react­ed to the MeToo cri­sis the way it reacts to every sup­posed sea change moment: by cap­i­tal­is­ing on the issue before assum­ing the hard work was done. A flood of films either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly address­ing the issue of sex­u­al assault fol­lowed, and then, inevitably, noth­ing real­ly changed. Maybe now it’s just an open secret that women are held in con­tempt by the enter­tain­ment indus­try. Blink Twice reflects the real­i­ty that when pow­er­ful men are found to be guilty of wrong­do­ing, they apol­o­gise and all is for­giv­en. They find new, insid­i­ous ways to abuse their sta­tus. The moments of vio­lence in Kravitz’s film are a shock­ing con­trast from the sun­bleached par­adise; blood drips onto the pris­tine match­ing sun­dress­es all the women wear, the ​“Badass Maid” holds a dead lash viper aloft tri­umphant­ly. Like bad mem­o­ries slip­ping through the cracks, it doesn’t take that long to realise some­thing is very, very wrong.

As view­ers, it’s easy to see the red flags a mile away and so will the women to run for their lives – and per­haps they should be a lit­tle more sus­pi­cious of Slater King’s spon­ta­neous hos­pi­tal­i­ty, giv­en the real­i­ty of exist­ing as a woman is learn­ing very quick­ly that noth­ing comes for free. But when the good life final­ly comes call­ing, it’s hard to resist dip­ping a toe in. When Fri­da gazes at Slater, it’s not clear if she wants to dance with him or devour him and absorb his pow­er for her­self. Ack­ie flesh­es out a some­what under­writ­ten hero­ine with her mag­net­ic per­for­mance; she’s charis­mat­ic and klutzy with an uncom­mon expres­sive­ness, a per­fect foil to Adria Arjona’s more tra­di­tion­al badass (her char­ac­ter proud­ly refers to her eight sea­sons on the real­i­ty show ​‘Hot Sur­vivor Babes’) and Alia Shawkat’s famil­iar but not unwel­come lacon­ic ston­er girl.

The chem­istry and cama­raderie between the female char­ac­ters is one of Blink Twice’s most wel­come ele­ments. Ini­tial­ly threat­en­ing to pit the women against each oth­er, a rug-pull Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Feigen­baum pull off is a sol­i­dar­i­ty that doesn’t feel unearned or cringe in the mael­strom of Hol­ly­wood faux-fem­i­nism we’ve also been sub­ject to since 2017. It feels nat­ur­al because the actress­es them­selves are nat­u­rals – even when the script throws in a line that seems tai­lor-made for the trail­er edit, they sell every line.

But there are some inter­nal log­ic issues in the third act that shouldn’t be glossed over, and the posi­tion­ing of the island’s Indige­nous staff to near silent but seem­ing­ly all-know­ing beings feels like a mis­step, mak­ing them com­plic­it in the actions of their employ­er. Con­sid­er­ing three of the women in the main cast are non-white, it feels like a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the rela­tion­ship between mar­gin­alised peo­ple, or at the very least to demon­strate the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance that can occur when vis­it­ing anoth­er coun­try. Instead Blink Twice oper­ates very much in the vein of the exploita­tions films of yore, focus­ing more on the action and cathar­sis than a grand takeaway.

Per­haps that’s the point. As Amer­i­ca Fer­rera said in Bar­bie, ​“It is lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to be a woman.” As Char­li XCX said in Girl, So Con­fus­ing, ​“It’s so con­fus­ing some­times to be a girl.” But while Gerwig’s expres­sion of female sol­i­dar­i­ty was tai­lor-made for Tik­Toks and Charli’s song about nev­er being sure if Lorde likes her cul­mi­nat­ed in them team­ing up to make the inter­net go crazy, Blink Twice feels angri­er. And why not? When you have to exist in a world that was not designed for you and face con­tin­u­al ani­mos­i­ty and vio­la­tion for resist­ing, some­times it feels like the only option is a pri­mal scream. It’s no coin­ci­dence that Kravitz’s cen­tre­piece nee­dle drop in Blink Twice is Beyoncé’s ​‘I’M THAT GIRL’ (a coup, too, as Bey­on­cé is noto­ri­ous­ly picky about who she licens­es her music to). The song, which opened her 2022 album RENAIS­SANCE, serves as a mis­sion state­ment and a response, refer­ring to her ​“Un-Amer­i­can Life” and the con­tin­ued (at this point laugh­able) attempts to define her by her husband.

It’s a bold announce­ment as a film­mak­er for Zoë Kravitz, who shows an inher­ent cine-lit­er­a­cy as well as a refresh­ing play­ful­ness. Where most actors-turn-direc­tors choose to cre­ate projects for them­selves to star in or thin­ly veiled per­sonas, Kravitz has gone a dif­fer­ent way, craft­ing a film quite unlike any­thing in her back cat­a­logue but pos­sess­ing the same spirit­ed­ness that intro­duced her all the way back in 2012 when she played Toast the Know­ing in Mad Max: Fury Road. There are some rough edges here that one might expect from a first-time direc­tor, but as a state­ment of intent, it’s more than promis­ing. Arriv­ing in the dog days of sum­mer it’s an exhil­a­rat­ing and slick thriller, weapon­is­ing Chan­ning Tatum’s com­fort­ing all-Amer­i­can charm not a month after his much-cel­e­brat­ed cameo in Dead­pool and Wolver­ine.

Per­haps the most sur­pris­ing thing about Blink Twice is that its mes­sage of female sol­i­dar­i­ty feels sin­cere with­out being cyn­i­cal­ly cor­po­rate. Rather than pat­ting itself on the back for high­light­ing the impor­tance of women’s rela­tion­ships, there’s an under­stand­ing that women are not a mono­lith, and embrac­ing each other’s com­plex­i­ties enables us to fight struc­tur­al inequal­i­ty bet­ter. But in the mean­time, doesn’t it feel kind of good to just let that anger fly?