I may have reviewed a bit too close to the sun with this one
I always feel like the best way to watch a movie for the first time is without any expectations. This goes beyond not watching any trailers—which I generally don’t—and reaches into the realm of trying to take a film at face value.
Online, it sometimes feels like there is a generation of moviegoers reared on Cinema Sins whose primary way of engaging with/critiquing a film is to nitpick; to come at a film with fully formed ideas about how a film should—but mostly shouldn’t—present itself.
A film shouldn’t have opening credits. A film shouldn’t be over two hours long. A film shouldn’t have unnecessary sex scenes. A film shouldn’t have an ambiguous ending. A film shouldn’t have a plot device that doesn’t hold up to real-world logic. Guns don’t work like that. Fire doesn’t spread like that. People don’t talk like that. That’s a fake phone. That’s a greenscreen. That’s CGI.
It should be said that there’s nothing inherently wrong with this style of criticism, so long as you’re having fun with a film and it doesn’t become mean-spirited (which, let’s be real, it often does). But God above, what a joyless way to approach cinema.
To understand a filmmaker’s goals—to see what they’re trying to accomplish and judge whether their method was successful or not on the terms that the filmmaker laid out—I think that’s a better way to engage with the medium. Of course, there’s no such thing as approaching a film with a completely blank slate.
Get Out of My Head
I’m starting my review of Blink Twice with all of this preamble for a reason: I tried to take the movie at face value. I embraced it, at first, with open arms. A psychological thriller with Channing Tatum, Alia Shawkat, and Adria Arjona? Fabulous. Alas, as the film progressed, things changed. Comparisons and judgments abounded, few of them favourable.
I struggled to take Blink Twice for what it was. Nothing felt original. Around every corner I saw something that I’d seen done before; sometimes to better effect, sometimes to worse. In the end, I struggled to discern what exactly the point of the movie was.
I was at sea, tossed overboard by waves of allusions to other films and the sense that this narrative had been designed with the cynical goal to shock the audience; to create discourse; to reverse-engineer a movie that does for misogyny what Get Out does for racism.
Blink Twice feels obviously inspired by Jordan Peele’s Get Out, which is fine, but the elements that would’ve set it apart from the modern classic horror also feel like well-worn ground. Many themes and topics the movie attempts to explore are evergreen, but it fails to engage with them in a manner different from other recent films, and winds up feeling uninspired.
Billionaires with private islands might actually be bad guys? Yeah, I remember that from Glass Onion (2019). It’s f*cked up when men manipulate women's minds and bodies without their consent or knowledge? Sure, Don’t Worry Darling (2022) did that.
(Side Note: Glass Onion’s surface-level examination of how billionaires are bad is balanced by the fact that the movie is otherwise incredibly entertaining; Don’t Worry Darling’s surface-level examination of how misogyny is bad is… not compensated for in any way)
In an interview with Deadline, actor—and now writer/director—Zoë Kravitz said that she started working on the script for Blink Twice (then titled Pussy Island) in 2017, the same year Get Out was released. Of course, seven years to write, shoot, and release a film isn’t unheard of in Hollywood, but over the years, it feels like Blink Twice has had its thunder stolen again and again by other movies.
Are You Having a Good Time?
I suppose I should say what Blink Twice is about: When cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) is invited to a private island by billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), her initial excitement begins to wear thin after countless days of drug-fuelled partying and the increasing sense that something is wrong.
Blink Twice starts off strong. Kravitz sets up the characters and premise with obvious skill. The growing sense of unease and paranoia that pervades the film is effective and I found myself genuinely willing for Frida and the other women who travel to the island with Slater and his buddies to start putting the pieces together.
The soundtrack is haunting, and the sound design was absolutely delightful at times. There’s one scene that uses various people’s voices as jump scares again and again in a way that I had never seen before that worked really well to make me feel the way the characters did.
Ackie and her co-star Adria Arjona are also amazing here, especially when the plot really starts to kick off. Their performances carry this movie, helping it feel a little more grounded as the viewer is forced again and again to swallow contrivances in the plot and the specifics of how any of the movie’s narrative devices actually work.
Questions, Questions
I’m a big fan of movie logic. When a movie waves its hand and says ‘Don’t think about it,’ I play along. ‘Ok,’ I say. ‘I won’t think about it. But you better give me something else to think about, or we’re going to have a problem.’ Unfortunately, Blink Twice fails at this.
It’s not that I couldn’t suspend my disbelief, it’s that the movie asks you to look closely at how it works. It makes you question what’s really going on; how any of this could really be happening.
And the questioning is fun. It’s the answers that let me down. By leaning in, you see the cracks. But how could that…? How could they…? How does that work if…?
I don’t think Blink Twice succeeds on its own merit. There’s some good stuff here—especially early on—and Kravitz did a great job with the directing. By the end though, I think it places shock value over a nuanced exploration of its themes.
The movie sets up so many elements that don’t pay off in the slightest. I struggle to reconcile my empathy for the characters, who endure horrific abuse, and the hollow feeling I had by the end that came not from emotional fallout, but from the fact that the movie has nothing interesting to say.
For a psychological thriller, the film's takes on human psychology are neither interesting or insightful, but they're also not anything that hasn't already been said in other movies. This is the second way that I think Blink Twice fails.
Perhaps it’s an unfair comparison. I’m not judging the film on face value, after all, and I don’t know how much movies like Get Out, Don’t Worry Darling, or Glass Onion inspired Blink Twice. I've seen others compare it to Saltburn and Midsommar. Kravitz might not have seen any of these movies. It doesn’t really matter, though. In 2024, Blink Twice feels like an echo.
Apologies for the verbose and spiralling discourse on the nature of film criticism. After all this, I’m wondering if Blink Twice deserves this level of scrutiny. It’s a fine movie. Just fine. I’m sorry, Blink Twice. It’s just that… that…
Memory doesn’t work that way! Perfume doesn’t work that way! Snakes don’t work that way! Therapy doesn’t work that way!
Oh, god.
Oh, god.
What have I become.
***
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