This summer belongs to Channing Tatum. He starred in the excellent rom-com Fly Me to the Moon and had a scene-stealing role in another summer blockbuster. This time, he’s under the direction of his fiancée, Zoë Kravitz, in her directorial debut. Blink Twice is a new thriller movie originally titled Pussy Island. Naturally, the MPA didn’t want to release a film with this title, and many didn’t want to see a movie with this title. Unfortunately, having seen the film, the title should have been the least of their worries as far as getting people to want to watch it.
Blink Twice is a puzzling movie with many thought-provoking ideas and themes diluted in a script that doesn’t do any of them justice. This film is particularly frustrating because it’s clear about what it wants to say, and then the execution undercuts itself. Our protagonist, Frida (Naomi Ackie), is at a cocktail event that billionaire Slater King (Tatum) will attend. Slater invites Frida and her friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) get invited to his private island for a vacation of partying, drugs, and fun. But the fun doesn’t last forever because as she witnesses strange things, she discovers not all is as it seems.
This film should have been so much better than it is, but it feels like an inferior version of other movies. Blink Twice has some stylish camerawork and shot choices from Kravitz, who shows some promise as a director. However, the screenplay co-written by her and E.T. Feigenbaum feels very derivative of films like Get Out and The Stepford Wives. The setting of a billionaire’s island is straight out of Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Parts of the film also feel like The White Lotus, Saltburn, and Don’t Worry Darling. Hell, we even saw something like this earlier this month in Cuckoo. Every bit of this movie feels like a variation of something we have already seen.
The issue here concerns the pacing. The first half of the movie needs more momentum. We’re on the island and have a few peculiar discoveries and events, but none of them are as fascinating as they should be. It never pulls us to the edge of our seats. We’re mainly waiting for something bad to happen. There are many very obvious setups where a key piece of information will be revealed, and it’s extremely obvious that it will come back to the plot later. There’s no subtlety to this script, making it very predictable.
Some ideas feel strange and cobbled together. After a long series of predictable setups, Blink Twice begins to give us answers about what’s happening. There’s something sinister brewing underneath the surface, and this film clues us in on what’s happening. When we find out what’s happening, it can be horrific and graphic to the point where the movie stops being entertaining. There are dark ideas here, and it’s a striking commentary on what men would do if they believed they could get away with something.
But the issue here is with the tone. Blink Twice tries really hard to be funny. It’s not funny for most of it. There are attempts at humor, but in my packed opening night crowd, the most it could muster were a few chuckles here and there. It’s trying to be an entertaining crowd-pleaser, but the dialogue needs to be more sharp to pull that off. It has its moments, but the reveal of what’s happening and how it’s filmed left me with a bad taste in my mouth that made it challenging to have fun with this situation.
By the time things are revealed, we realize that we know almost nothing about Frida as a person and what pushes her forward. We learn a bit about Slater and how he would rather forget than forgive, which is one of the film’s themes. But besides that, most of these characters are pretty dull. Many of them get annoying after a while, given how they’re intoxicated for a good portion of the runtime. In the final act, lines are drawn in the sand, and we know who our heroes and villains are. And that’s where the movie lost me even further.
It has some acceptable moments, and a few people get what they deserve. However, many emotions feel manufactured, and nothing hits as hard as it should. Attempts at jump scares throughout become so repetitive that they become ineffective and humorous. The final two minutes of Blink Twice pose serious moral questions about what this movie actually wants to say because if you think about it for a second, it’s repugnant and doesn’t nearly have the emotional quality this movie wants you to feel towards it.
We haven’t even considered the slew of unanswered questions and hanging threads. Many ideas get resolved, but a few details don’t get a satisfying answer. A twist near the end is shocking and works well, but the movie also feels in conflict with itself at times. For example, the poster prominently features a character taking a Polaroid photograph. However, given that the entire movie is about forgetting, it seems contradictory to have the characters constantly taking pictures. This idea only seems to exist so that certain people can leave a paper trail behind for others to find.
The tone remains an absolute mess during the final act as well. Each character can sometimes feel like they’re in a different movie. The setting is very much a horrifying thriller. One character acts like he’s in a fun screwball comedy. Another character is giving ’80s action movie one-liners. They do something with a character that made me think of the most hilariously bad scene in The Purge. It gets even worse once we get to a villain who spends way too much time monologuing and a moment that seems like it should be serious, but offers the most meme-able movie content of the year.
Some of the editing also feels strange. It can feel like we’re missing some crucial information. Parts can be a bit fast and a bit slow. All of the levity feels out of place. Blink Twice is a movie that seeks to empower women, and there are moments where it does that successfully. But having fun with this movie is nearly impossible, and the final two minutes are highly questionable. Kravitz succeeds in creating a disturbing situation but does not create a movie worth rewatching with too many ideas wasted.
SCORE: 3/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 3 equates to “Bad.” Due to significant issues, this media feels like a chore to take in.
