“Relax – you’re on vacation!” says Geena Davis’ ditzy PA-type Stacy in Zoë Kravitz’s razor-sharp island-set thriller. But there’s not much about the Channing Tatum-led Blink Twice that is relaxing, with the film somewhere in between The Menu and 2022 Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion. It should provoke some serious social media debates in the weeks to come.
Co-written by Kravitz and E.T. Feigenbaum, this bloodcurdling battle of the sexes starts out like a wish-fulfilment fantasy as cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) score the opportunity of a lifetime when they run into Tatum’s tech billionaire Slater King at a fundraising event he’s hosting. Soon enough, he’s invited them both to his private island for the holiday of a lifetime, joining a whole group of hangers-on who like to eat, drink and do industrial quantities of drugs.
Among them, there is Tom (Haley Joel Osment), Lucas (Levon Hawke) and Vic (Christian Slater), who all work for King-Tech, while the female contingent includes ex-reality TV star Sarah (Adria Arjona), Camilla (Liz Caribel) and Heather (Trew Mullen), a super-stoner who spends most of the film high on her own supply. Every night, it seems, is party night – as they consume gourmet cuisine prepared by Cody (Red Rocket’s Simon Rex) and drop liquid MDMA on their tongues.
Yet there is clearly trouble in paradise – hinted at by the unnerving presence of Kyle MacLachlan’s shadowy figure on the island. Who is he? Why are there snakes everywhere? And what is it with those weird red gift bags? Kravitz, making her directorial debut, knows exactly how to drip-feed information, until it dawns on you that it’s all about to get very bad indeed.
At its heart, Blink Twice is a disturbing tale about abuse, but it’s also a film about female solidarity and holding a middle finger up to the patriarchy. “Women have been taught to compete with each other,” says Sarah, but this a film about females fighting back. With that in mind, Blink Twice gets its gore on towards the end, with everything from knives to corkscrews being utilised in insanely violent ways.