Actress Zoë Kravitz has shot to the forefront of the conversation regarding our industry’s finest young directors with her directorial debut in Blink Twice. With more than a decade of experience in front of the camera, Kravitz proves her career evolution into a multi-hyphenate artist is long overdue.
In 2022, Kravitz stole every scene in Matt Reeves’ critically acclaimed The Batman, portraying the damaged daughter of a mob boss who seeks revenge against her monstrous father who had her mother killed. It was a daring take on the character of Selina Kyle (AKA Catwoman), and the momentum from that film continues with Kravitz’s Blink Twice, which she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum.
As a writer-director, Kravitz had a clear vision for the film and she’s clearly earned the faith of her peers. It’s impressive cast assembled by Kravitz that includes Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Alia Shawkat, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Geena Davis, and the ever-present Kyle MacLachlan.
Kravitz plays well within the thriller genre, allowing the mystery of the island to unravel with gorgeous cinematography and adept pacing. Kravitz’s screenplay slowly turns the audience’s feelings of dread into pure horror and later delight as twisted justice is delivered to the vilified “one-percenters.”
Billionaire tech mogul Slater King (Tatum), who recently stepped down as CEO from his company for unspecified bad behavior, invites Frida (Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) to his private island where there are stiff rules for the lavish location.
Slater’s assistant Stacy (Davis) confiscates their phones as part of this blind deal to see how the one percent live in luxury. Slater’s crew includes the photographer Vic (Slater), chef Cody (Rex), DJ Tom (a refreshing Haley Joel Osment) along with the female guests that range from a reality star (Arjona) to an app developer and marijuana indulging lawyer. The women lean into the experince with everything from the perfumes to cocktails to hallucinogenics.
Frida clashes with Sarah the influencer and Jess picks up on some memory lapses which become a larger issue along with oddities like seeing workers with the same snake tattoo. Frida is called “Red Rabbit” by a maid in a rather strange encounter.
Kyle MacLachlan plays therapist to Tatum’s Slater and shows up at this time with a sense of things not being quite right. During a night of misadventures, Jess gets attacked by a snake and that triggers her desire to leave the island. The next morning Frida notices that Lucas smells like women’s perfume.and some digging leads her to find a room with dozens of identical red gift bags.
The maid slips Frida snake venom and drinking it brings on strange events that seem to be intact memories. Frida is the only one to realize that Jess is missing… in fact, none of the other women remember her being on the island.
Driven by the mystery, Frida learns that the island has an indigenous plant that is capable of wiping memories. The memory clearing compound is extracted from the plant incorporated into the food and perfumes. Frida convinces Sarah of the truth and snake venom ingestion turns out to be the antidote to the plant’s mind erasing effects.
The girls keep drinking the venom to maintain their wits as Frida attempts to retrieves the phones from Slater’s office. Phones are dead (and it’s not like there’s 5 bars of service on the island).
Frida uncovers the sexually assaults occurring on the island via her returned memories — and worse yet — her friend Jess was killed when they couldn’t erase her mind due to the snake bite that she received. them every night and wiping their memories using the flower. Frida also collects hard evidence in the form of polaroids that show women and men with red gift bags — Slater is a monster worthy of Epstein comparisons and that Tatum delivers a rather sinister performance (though shy of Chris Hemsworth’s fabulous work in Furiosa).
The invited guests are ready to fight back and the audience is ready to rally behind the abused for some good old fashioned revenge.
Frida and Sarah are both fully aware of the vacation’s horrors while Camilla and Heather are slowly getting their memories restored. The first causality in their revolt on the island is Tom, who gets stabbed to death by Camilla while Heather assaults Vic. Heather is able to badly injure Vic before Slater’s security guard shoots her dead.
Not one to be left out of the mayhem, Slater kills Camilla himself while Stacy goes on the attack against Frida. It’s a twisted reality that Stacy’s mind cannot accept.. so she literally tries to kill the messenger. With no other choice, Frida kills Stacy and this is where the action is nonstop.
Slater’s security guard pursues Frida and things look bad for our protagonist until Sarah steps in and kills the guard. Sarah takes his gun and within a few moments both Cody and Lucas bite the dust, leaving our billionaire host Slater for a final confrontation.
Frida learns that she is a repeat visitor to the island, and that’s why the maid recognized her earlier in the film. Frida is cornered by Slater who laughs off his public apology at the start of the film when he stepped down as CEO. He has Frida where he wants her, so he turns his attention to finding Sarah.
With Slater out of the room, Frida gets the idea to fill his vape device with the memory-erasing perfume. This is a great moment of acting on Tatum’s part as he returns and uses the vape. Slater’s short term memory is slowly erased and he panics upon eyeing the bodies surrounding him. The jolt of adrenaline and fear leads him to knock himself out cold via a slip and fall. With Slater unconscious and the villa catching fire, the girls can escape with some form of justice served.
While Vic is left to die on the island, Frida saves Slater’s life (we assume for him to face the justice system’s full fury). In a fascinating (and calculating) move, Frida has gone on to marry Slater and take the position of CEO in his company. Frida is constantly drugging the rapist abuser with the extract of the island’s memory wiping flower… thus keeping him in a stupor and compliant with her plans.
The film’s close with a manipulation of a manipulator is the icing on the cake to a very successful genre exercise from Kravitz. She’s assembled something timely that will resonate with audiences and likely spark further discussion as it finds wide appeal.
Letter Grade: B+