Blink Twice Movie Review: Capable of Drawing From Current Events to Stage a Good Screenplay?
Cast: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Alia Shawkat, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona
Director: Zoe Kravitz
Where to Watch: In Theaters
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
Blink Twice wasn’t originally supposed to be called Blink Twice. Still, for promotional reasons, the title chosen by director Zoë Kravitz during production was changed because it was considered problematic and, essentially, offensive by a good portion of the public. The offending title? It was Pussy Island. We tell you this story not because you were wrong, this is the review of the film, but because it says a lot about what the actress and daughter of art had in mind for her debut behind the camera. A less interpretable and sibylline cut, but clearer, aimed at the political sense of the film, without too many turns of phrase. A film therefore first and foremost provocative and that, despite the classic mystery horror format is, in fact, very determined in its development, having above all the objective of nailing the viewer. A path halfway between arrogance and courage, the one chosen by Kravitz who, despite some compositional problems, gives life to something derivative (almost postmodern), but also bold, both in terms of direction and writing, where he dares to mix different linguistic registers, putting a lot of meat on the fire and also taking on several responsibilities.
As if it wasn’t enough to have to manage a cast with several first-rate names, including veterans like Christian Slater and Geena Davis, and to tackle such a delicate and complex theme as the one he brings with him in a shamelessly sharp and pop way. The famous interpreter Zöe Kravitz makes her debut behind the camera with a feminist allegory as biting as it is full of charm. Far from being a subtle, finely calibrated, and exquisitely profound rhetorical figure on existence: a real hammer blow. Everything is clear from the first second and, many hours after watching the film, the pain persists. It hurts for its crudeness and excites for its clarity. The actress Zöe Kravitz (daughter of Lenny) surprises and excites with an exercise in visceral cinema. Since #MeToo emerged, we have seen all kinds of more or less inspired, more or less crude formulations on the subject. All that was missing would make us jump out of our seats and that, without rhetoric, exploded on the screen: as we will see in our review of Blink Twice, Kravitz surprises with an exercise in visceral cinema, in which everything is clear from the first second, but which hurts with its crudeness and thrills with its clarity.
Blink Twice Movie Review: The Story Plot
The protagonist is Frida (Naomi Ackie), a girl who does nail design and works as a waitress at events. While doing research on her cell phone about the life of Slater King (Channing Tatum), the billionaire at whose event she will work, she discovers that he is a powerful businessman who, after a troubled situation that is not clear what it was, is doing a media tour apologizing and saying that he will retire for a while on his private island to reflect. Instead of worrying about what she sees, Frida is fascinated. The man is handsome, seems sorry for what he has done, and has a lot of money, something the girl cannot do without. For this reason, together with her colleague and roommate Jess ( Alia Shawkat ), they take some liberties in service, crash the party as guests and, after a series of convenient incidents, end up attracting the attention of King and his group. The boy chats with her and is attracted by her freshness. Frida wants to continue spending the night with him and Slater ends up inviting her and her group of friends to board his private plane with them to spend a few days on the island in question.
The tour will include three of them, his “right-hand man” Vic (Christian Slater), his friend and chef Cody (Simon Rex), another friend of Slater’s named Tom (Haley Joel Osment), a reality TV contestant like SURVIVOR! Sarah (Adria Arjona), Slater’s private assistant (Geena Davis), two other girls in the mood for a “permanent party,” a very young guy (Levon Hawke), and a hunky security guard. Slater’s psychologist, played by Kyle MacLachlan, will appear at the event, but will not be traveling with them to the island where, predictably, cell phones will have to be left behind upon their arrival. Once there, everything is wonderful: signature cuisine, a luxury pool, unlimited drinks, a comfortable villa, and rooms with clothes, perfumes, and the most refined objects imaginable. Everything seems to be going very well and relatively calm – within the parameters of a party that lasts for days and sometimes gets a little out of control – but some things send Frida’s mind into a tailspin: the nearby presence of snakes, the way the club’s employees look at her, some inexplicable objects or situations and even some hits in her memory. But the next day everything seemed normal, and the party continued. Until it happens. And the only thing that can be said from that moment on is that, predictably, some things are hidden under that paradise. And they are quite terrible.
Blink Twice Movie Review and Analysis
Zoë Kravitz‘s debut film also attempts to be a brutal satire of the ways and customs of the billionaires of this world. The fact that it all takes place in the middle of a few days of celebration on a private island brings to mind some characters who are (or were) part of that 0.1% of the richest and most powerful. Blink Twice – which refers to a code to be used as a warning in potentially dangerous situations – tries to work both as a comedy and as a horror film, as a social satire and as a chaotic and confusing fight for survival, a bit like in Mark Mylod’s The Menu. It’s a difficult tone to achieve, and even more so for a debut film, so much so that at times the film doesn’t know whether to take itself seriously or not, and neither does the viewer: what happens is so crude and so seriously that the moments of humor seem, at times, a little out of place. It is precisely this duality, once the series of mysteries surrounding the party itself begins to be revealed, that puts the very power of the film at risk.
In any case, Kravitz’s film remains intense and at times gripping, thanks to ingenious audiovisual choices by the debuting director, a soundtrack full of excellent James Brown songs, and a great cast, in which Ackie, Arjona, and Shawkat shine. At least in the first half, when it is not clear what is happening, Blink Twice manages to convey tension and unease with minimal elements and disturbing details, definitively increasing the feeling that something brutal is going to happen. The problem is that, once it starts to be more or less clear what it is (not entirely, because the script focuses entirely on plot twists), it becomes difficult to maintain its biting tone. Very direct and clear in its criticism of a certain type of people – the “Elon Musks” of this world and their henchmen – Kravitz’s film tries to go further, raising the controversy that the apologies and regrets of these “powerful white people” are meaningless, as they are, more than anything, performative acts to be consumed in the media and on social networks.
On a fantasy island – at least initially – or in the real world, the protagonists of Blink Twice know that they are the kind of people who never forgive and that, no matter how much everyone criticizes and questions them, they will soon forget and let them get away with it. Or maybe not… Understandably, Zoë Kravitz wanted to play with the structure of Blink Twice because it is essential in its conception and above all already digested by the general public and therefore explainable in a short time. Little time, like the one the film takes to organize its premises, is decided from the beginning, as does not often happen in a debut. The problems lie in how the director decided to stuff this structure once erected, mixing many things, disseminating too many clues, and opening parentheses without then needing to close them. Critical issues are born in the attempt to divert a plot already seen (it even reaches self-irony) and in mixing too many genre and directorial solutions. On the other hand, this last consideration can also be read as a courageous experiment.
Then there are happier choices, like the work on the gaze, which relies on the wonderful eyes of Naomi Ackie, recalling them often, mindful of that very cinematic idea that with our eyes we create reality and memories. Memories is another key word, often used in films. Memories are delicate matters, and we must take care to always create good ones, for the rest forgetting is a blessing. The alteration of memory creates a status of fiction, like that of the island, like that of success, of life in the shop window, of the instagrammable life. A beautiful thematic apparatus in which Blink Twice inserts a firm, violent, commercial (almost B-movie) condemnation of the terrible contemporary male and toxic relationships, always wearing the female perspective and with the merit of putting it in crisis. The attraction towards toxicity is also in the protagonists of the film, who discover that only through collaboration can they overcome the competition that the world (especially that world, the world of desire, where there is the promise of no longer being invisible) imposes on them.
Too good to be true? Definitely, because if the first days of vacation are spent in total fun, between food, alcohol, and drugs (taken responsibly, let’s be clear), here the oddities begin to emerge. Yes, because Frida realizes that she is starting to forget things, and even people, and there are more and more flashbacks that she can’t explain. Not only that, it seems that the island staff somehow know her and there is a woman who keeps calling her “red rabbit”. And even if at first Frida doesn’t seem to pay too much attention to what is happening around her, things start to have an increasingly disturbing connotation. Especially when she realizes that only the women in the group seem to suffer from these strange amnesias, so she decides to delve deeper to understand what is really happening. And the truth is shocking, to say the least.
In addition to the excellent Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum, Blink Twice also benefits from other excellent names that it has included in the cast, including Geena Davis, Adria Arjona (just seen in the excellent Hitman), Christian Slater, and Kyle McLachlan. Zoe Kravitz has proven to be very good at managing the pace of the film, wisely dosing the insertion of elements of tension, in a continuous crescendo that then flows into a perhaps predictable finale, but still well constructed. All this without ever losing the logical thread of the plot but building a narrative fabric capable of highlighting a particular female condition and prevailing misogyny, which unfortunately finds ample confirmation in everyday reality.
Blink Twice Movie Review: The Last Words
Zoë Kravitz‘s directorial debut is a political film with a provocative heart and almost revanchist intentions, intended as a gender war. Blink Twice is an all-female film in which the daughter of art pours her gaze on the world (especially the one she belongs to), creating a title that struggles to manage the predictability of its plot, putting too much meat on the fire, but has the merit of the courage to dare and, above all, the lucidity in structuring its thematic focus. Zoë Kravitz‘s first film successfully mixes thriller, social commentary, and humor, focusing on the surprise factor with a series of plot twists and a good pace. Blink Twice is a good thriller, never banal and capable of drawing from current events to stage a good screenplay, supported by a truly well-matched cast, with applause for Channing Tatum, both charming and “unctuous” in his role as Slaughter King (the mistake is intentional).
Blink Twice Movie Review: Capable of Drawing From Current Events to Stage a Good Screenplay? - Filmyhype
Director: Zoe Kravitz
Date Created: 2024-08-23 16:33
3.5
Pros
- The interpenetration of visual and narrative language to tell horror in all its forms
- Great casting and Channing Tatum's performance in an unseen role
Cons
- It's not necessarily an original story, which could give many the impression of "already seen"
