Blink Twice Can’t Quite Get Out of the Shadow of Its Biggest Influence

Was it an act of inspiration or arrogance, the way that Get Out convinced so many filmmakers they could make one just like it? It’s not that Blink Twice, the new thriller from actor-turned-filmmaker Zoë Kravitz, bungles the job with the same twisting-in-the-wind cluelessness of, say, Antebellum. Kravitz makes her points with force, humor, style – and the conviction that she, as a well-connected and already-famous cinephile, is uniquely positioned to make them. Even this conviction feels like a lift from Get Out, where Jordan Peele flaunted the movie-geek expertise and sketch-comedy background that allowed him to turn what could have been a funny idea for a five-minute sketch into a genuinely unnerving horror experience (and making it both funnier and scarier in the process). Blink Twice, by contrast, never quite stops sounding like a pitch for itself.

At first, Kravitz turns the movie’s slipperiness into something tantalizingly elusive, building some suspense from her refusal to let things add up. Roommates Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) work at a catering company, putting them in contact with an exclusive event spearheaded by tech CEO Slater King (Channing Tatum), whose videos of unspecified public contrition opens the film. In a bold and confusingly successful move, Frida and Jess make a late-evening switch into cocktail attire and blend into the waning hours of the party. Frida had a moment with Slater at a previous event, and clearly fantasizes about reconnecting with him. (What’s in it for Jess isn’t clear.) They do indeed cross paths again, and after a round of drinks with Slater’s various friends and hangers-on, the two women have scored an invitation to his private island. They accept. It seems like their only hesitation comes when they’re asked to “voluntarily” surrender their cell phones by Slater’s harried assistant (Geena Davis). They’re not too young to refuse and they’re not too old to succumb to peer pressure.

Does any of this really make sense? The signifiers are there, yes, but Kravitz keeps the characters at arm’s length long enough that we’re forced to conclude that we don’t know whether these are decisions they would normally make. Sometimes this strategy pays off, as in the characterization of Sarah (Adria Arjona), a reality-TV star who’s nominally attached to the group’s preening celebrity chef (Simon Rex) but clearly has designs on Slater. As the group eats, drinks, takes drugs (urged toward mindfulness and intentionality with note-perfect vacuousness by Tatum), swims and parties into a blur of days and nights and troublingly lost time, Sarah and Frida seem like rivals in the making – until a conversation places them on the same page. It’s a showcase for the nimble Arjona, who seamlessly switches what’s funny about her character without missing a comic beat.

But hold on again: Is a multi-season veteran of a popular reality show really on the same have-versus-have-nots level as a couple of near-broke caterers? Or is it gender, rather than class, that scored them their invitations? (Race goes entirely unmentioned.) If something nefarious is happening to Slater’s unsuspecting island recruits, what’s the selection process like, and why does the gender balance still feel lopsided? Kravitz’s screenplay, co-written with E.T. Feigenbaum (who worked with her on the High Fidelity TV series), plants itself further in the that-just-raises-further-questions school of intrigue. It has answers to the most immediate questions about what we see on screen and why; it doesn’t have much to explore about its characters, and what’s happening underneath their surfaces.

Kravitz does make some nice surfaces, though. The film’s editing, from Kathryn J. Schubert (who assisted in the editing of some great indies like Green Room and Mississippi Grind), has an itchy, disjunctive propulsion, with an amped-up sound design to match. The cinematography from Adam Newport-Berra (The Last Black Man in San Francisco) uses shallow focus well enough to put a dozen trendily blurred-background blockbusters to shame. Blink Twice has real polish, which makes the stranding of Ackie at the center of Blink Twice look great, at least. Yet stranded she remains, regardless of whatever the movie thinks it’s saying about agency, fake #MeToo-era apologies, social mores or anything else. Other players in the cast can rely on comic relief – Tatum hilariously weaponizes his aw-shucks demeanor – while poor Ackie has to shoulder the burden of the movie’s confused observations.

Buzzwords are ample, sometimes enough to sound like parody, sometimes not quite there. Therapy! Trauma! There are at least three different moments where women are reminded to smile, and would you be surprised to learn that one male character nonsensically refers to himself as a nice guy? (Trust me: By the time it happens, you would not.) Even the movie’s best moments – and much of Blink Twice is entertaining through those moments – have the uncomfortable feeling of satire designed from a moneyed remove. I don’t doubt that Kravitz, an accomplished performer and semi-promising filmmaker, can see the thorny intersections of class, race and gender biases, and how they affect the wider world. She probably has experienced these things firsthand. But the protracted twistiness of Blink Twice often feels as if she processes them primarily through the lens of movies.

Director: Zoë Kravitz
Writer: Zoë Kravitz, E.T. Feigenbaum
Starring: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan, Geena Davis, Alia Shawkat
Release Date: August 23, 2024

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on Twitter under the handle @rockmarooned.