A couple of young women spontaneously jet off with a tech billionaire to his private island along with a gaggle of his guy and gal pals for a dream vacation among the rich and beautiful. Everything exceeds their wildest imaginations until things start to seem a bit hinky.
We’ve seen this plot outline often enough in movies and real life to know that no good comes to those who go to rich men’s private tropical islands. Especially young women who travel to rich men’s remote playgrounds. Blink Twice’s premise had me worried. But Zoë Kravitz, in her directorial debut (she also co-wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum), plants her flag on this storyline and then invites the wind to blow in from another direction entirely. Kravitz’s thriller goes from routine to rebellious before you can blink twice.
While working as cater waiters, Frida (Ackie, who, if there’s any justice, should find her star-making turn with this project) and her friend and roommate Jess (Shawkat) slip from their black-tie uniforms into party gowns to mingle with the well-heeled. The setting is a far cry from their dingy apartment where we are first introduced to Frida watching an apology video made by Slater King (Tatum), the tech billionaire bro whose foundation is hosting the swank shindig the women are about to work. It’s the type of prepared statement that’s become all too common in the era of cancel culture, even though Slater never states his transgression. And although we’re left to wonder what wrongful deeds he committed, we’ve seen enough of these apologies from rich and famous men in recent years to know the score without it even being explicitly stated. Despite this, Frida feels she made a connection with Slater when she catered the event the previous year, and she hopes to reignite that spark again this year.
Shortly after a meet-cute, Frida and Jess receive the invitation to join Slater and his jet-setting crew for a trip to his tropical isle. Slater’s scatterbrained assistant Stacy (Davis) collects and locks up everyone’s phone upon arrival. Still, all inner alarm bells are muffled by the exotic opulence of their locale and companions. Time passes in a sybaritic pastiche of endless flutes of champagne, fat blunts, gourmet meals, and sunbathing in the identical white bikinis and Grecian-goddess gowns provided by the estate. Gradually, strange details infiltrate Frida’s foggy complacency and her inchoate concerns are echoed by Sarah (Arjona, last seen in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man).
Kravitz imbues her thriller – originally titled Pussy Island – with feminist underpinnings that seem to be outgrowths of the #MeToo era. Languor is pierced with comic touches, horror meets its match against anger and indignation. Blink Twice flings ideas all over the place and, although welcome, they often seem underdeveloped or unfocused. Still, although Kravitz’s pacing sometimes flags, she emerges as a distinctive storytelling talent determined to prick the comfortable contours of our accepted fictions and realities.
This article appears in August 23 • 2024.
