“Blink Twice” opens with a blurry close-up shot of a frog, which then comes into glistening focus. The sound is eerie; the image is sinister, fascinating, mysterious and trippy. That describes the movie as well. “Blink Twice” is the first feature directed by Zoë Kravitz, who also co-wrote it (with E.T. Feigenbaum), and it’s a post-#MeToo feminist party-girl nightmare thriller that’s been made with an unusual sense of intimacy. Kravitz, the veteran actor (“The Batman,” “Kimi,” “Big Little Lies”), doesn’t rely on the standard medium shot/POV pedestrian film grammar. She composes the movie out of vibrant close-ups, using each shot (a cocktail, a glance, a social-media cutaway) to tell a story, drawing us into the center of an encounter, so that we’re staring at it and experiencing it at the same time. Her technique is riveting; this is the work of a born filmmaker.
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I wouldn’t call “Blink Twice” a horror movie, but it’s rooted in some pretty horrifying things. It’s about a naïve but socially ambitious upscale-catering waitress, Frida (Naomie Ackie), who gets herself invited to the private island of a famous tech billionaire named Slater King (Channing Tatum). Once there, she joins the other select young women who’ve been asked along, as well as the dudes who are there (most of whom work for the company, King-Tech), plunging into a luxe party vacation that never ends. Against a tropical paradise setting, the fancy drinks keep flowing; the psychedelic drugs keep getting passed out; the foodie dinners keep getting served; and the accommodations (exotic perfume, zillion-thread-count sheets, complimentary clothing) are out of some ultimate dream resort.
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In other words, it’s all part of a super-elite reverie, too good true to be true. Before long, the audience begins to wonder the same thing that Frida does: What’s the catch? What’s the price? What’s really going on?
Slater King, played by Channing Tatum under a soft beard, with a mellow dimpled grin, is a world-class charmer (even though he’s gotten in trouble for unspecified bad behavior and is now “in therapy”). He lays down a good-time signal that’s superficially uncoercive yet, after a while, so unyielding that there’s something ominous about it. The deluxe party atmosphere, driven by tasty needle drops like James Brown’s “People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul,” is all about do-what-you-feel “freedom,” yet it’s more than a little cultlike. The vibe is corporate hedonism. If the women don’t smile and flirt in just the right way, they’re going to be seen as not being with the program.
“Blink Twice” may remind you, at times, of “Midsommar,” Ari Aster’s sun-dappled white-cotton-dress bad-dream fantasia about a vacation taken by an American couple at a Swedish commune that turns out to be a cult. That movie had the dark pull of a forbidden fantasy. But “Blink Twice,” though it takes some very high-flying twists, is rooted in the sexual menace of the real world. The movie pings off the sagas of predators like Jeffrey Epstein, who brought vacationers (and fellow predators) to his getaway island, and Bill Cosby, who used drugs to commit his crimes. For a while in “Blink Twice,” there are clues that something very weird is going on. Frida drips steak juice onto her dress…and a bit later, the stain has vanished. She keeps noticing dirt under her fingernails. And what about the mysterious maid (María Elena Olivares) who keeps popping up like a figment out of “Don’t Look Now”? Her main job seems to be killing the big venomous yellow snakes who populate the island. But why?
Naomi Ackie, so superb as Whitney Houston in “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” makes her mark here as a starstruck climber who knows how to turn on the cool. In short hair, she resembles an R&B star from the early ’60s, but she’s got an arrestingly layered contempo presence. We can see that Frida, who dreams of launching her own nail-design brand, idolizes Slater, to the point of infiltrating the white-walled King-Tech fundraising bash she’s been hired to waitress at. She thinks she’s hit the jackpot when he asks her to the island, even as her big flashing detective doe eyes start to register red flags (first one: that they have to give up their cell phones).
Frida has brought along her roommate and best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat), and feels protected. The film seems to pivot around the idea that Slater, the mogul Prince Charming, has fallen for her. When we observe the wary interplay between her and Sarah (Adria Arjona, from “Hit Man”), a long-time star contestant on a “Survivor” reality show, we think that the rivalry between them is going to drive the story. But that’s just one of Kravitz’s sleight-of-hand gambits.
The men seem arrogant without being excessively creepy, from Christian Slater’s executive bigwig to Lucas the string-bean tech wizard (Levon Hawke) to Tom the cuddly geek (Haley Joel Osment) to Cody the chef, played by Simon Rex as an unctuous New Age food guru. They are not presented as villains, more like representative everydudes. But that’s kind of the point. As the film slowly reveals what’s going on, they emerge as versions of the Ben Kingsley character in “Death and the Maiden,” acting out the dark sides of ordinary men. Yet if Frida and her fellow island guests are victims, why, day after day, are they so in the dark about what’s going on?
The answer is at once bone-chilling and right out of a scenario that flirts, at least, with a kind of chemical science fiction (though it’s presented as all too actual). The film’s revelations may, in the end, be less narratively convincing than its setup. Yet the twists carry you along with a scary logic, working as both story and metaphor. “Blink Twice” turns out to be a feminist allegory of memory. It presents that in a literal and suspenseful way, but Zoë Kravitz, working with brash flair, is really making a grand statement about all the things that women are asked (and ask themselves) to forget. In “Blink Twice,” life can be a dream. The real nightmare happens when you wake up.
