By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum and Alia Shawkat
Directed by Zoë Kravitz
Written by Zoë Kravitz and E.T. Feigenbaum
MGM
It’s a shame that BLINK TWICE is being tossed out during the late-summer dog days, amidst several other wide genre releases. Not only is it a distinctive and gripping thriller that slowly but surely builds to pure horror, it’s a striking directorial debut for actress Zoë Kravitz that points the way toward a major second career for her.
Right from the start, Kravitz’s sprightly pacing, precise editing and fine eye for detail pull us right into the story she scripted with E.T. Feigenbaum, introducing us to Frida (Naomi Ackie), a catering waitress with ambitions for much more. She and her co-worker/roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) have a scheme to get ahead that they’ve likely played before: After fulfilling their official duties at a swanky gala for the KingTech corporation, they change out of their work clothes and don cocktail dresses to slip back into the party. Frida has a particular interest in infiltrating this bash, since she reveres KingTech’s CEO Slater King (Channing Tatum), who has just completed an apology tour for some unspecified past indiscretions, and seems wholly charming when he encounters Frida at the party.
Kravitz knows we’ve seen enough men behaving badly in the real world to take Slater’s claims of rehabilitation with a grain of salt, and uses that to build tension out of what appears, on the surface, to be a dream situation for Frida and Jess. Slater invites them to jet off with him and a group of friends to a private tropical island he has recently purchased, and where he has set up a mansion with pool and other no-expense-spared trappings. Upon arrival, the place seems like paradise, and while Slater and his fellow tech bros (played by Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, Simon Rex and others) are boisterous, they don’t seem overtly threatening. There are a couple of dubious requirements, like the fact that Frida and Jess are asked to turn over their cell phones, but all the other guests, including a few women, do the same, so no big deal, right? As Jess puts it when Frida questions their circumstances, “I don’t think it’s weird, I think it’s just, like, rich.”
Nonetheless, distrust of the wealthy is one of the themes Kravitz skillfully mines in BLINK TWICE, as Frida becomes increasingly aware of hints that all is not well, even as she can’t quite put all the pieces together. The scary stuff becomes more pronounced as the movie goes on, including an ominous housekeeper (María Elena Olivares) who wields a wicked machete against the poisonous snakes that inhabit the island. As unnerving as things get, Ackie and Kravitz keep it plausible that Frida wouldn’t want to bolt for a while, that she’s been seduced by the opulent setting and Slater’s attentions. “For the first time in my life, I’m not invisible,” she says, a line that will have sinister implications as the truth about Slater’s resort comes out.
Kravitz paces the revelations gradually but surely, and she and editor Kathryn J. Schubert (BAD THINGS) make them as startling visually for the audience as they are emotionally for Frida. Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra turns the island into a sumptuously inviting place by day, yet one with foreboding rooms hidden inside, like a Kubrickian hut interior that’s all red gift bags on white shelves. Beyond her marshalling of this superb craft package, Kravitz also proves herself as a fine director of actors with unerring casting instincts. Beyond those mentioned already, other notables in the ensemble are Adria Arjona, from Richard Linklater’s terrifically entertaining HIT MAN (non-genre side recommendation: Watch that one!), as a former regular on HOT SURVIVOR BABES whose arc in this story does not go where you’d expect, and Geena Davis as Slater’s constantly frazzled assistant.
As BLINK TWICE gets to the dark heart of its scenario, it becomes a potent exploration of the imbalance of power between men and women, and the exploitation that results. Yet Kravitz and her team’s attention to character and narrative ensure that the film does not become a didactic Statement, but works throughout as a tense viewing experience that keeps you as off-balance and uncertain as Frida. And when it reaches its climax, it becomes a very satisfyingly cathartic one as well.
