In her daring directorial debut, “Blink Twice,” writer-director Zoë Kravitz never flinches — not even when it might benefit her film to look away. In this biting, black-humored social-horror fable that recalls Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” she maintains a steely gaze even though Kravitz is training her artistic guns on sexual politics, not necessarily race. “Blink Twice,” which she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum, is a big, bold foray from the actress-turned-filmmaker, even if its message gets muddled along the way. It’s clear that Kravitz wants to make a statement with this film. What’s less clear, though, is what exactly that statement might be.
Blink Twice begins with a dead-eyed scroll through a dingy bathroom; our protagonist Frida (Naomi Ackie) catatonicly taps away at her phone’s toilet screen and watches the lives of others on Instagram before she and her roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) rush off to work, serving champagne and canapés at a swanky gala hosted by a disgraced tech mogul, Slater King (Channing Tatum). Yearning to be part of something bigger, the waiters slip into seductive dresses and join the party themselves. They are warmly welcomed into an inner circle of wealthy men, as is typical for beautiful young women. Jetting off with his mates on Slater’s private island? Frida longs for a vacation.
Kravitz observes this milieu of the moneyed elite well, and what she masterfully achieves in “Blink Twice” is an absurd comedy of gendered behavior once the men (Tatum, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Levon Hawke and Christian Slater) and women (Ackie, Shawkat, Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel and Trew Mullen) land on Slater’s secluded colonial estate in a lush tropical forest. Dressed in matching white bikinis and vacation wear, the girls are plied with fine wine, fine food and good drugs. The setting and its decor couldn’t be more luxurious, but Kravitz presents this world with a sickening, unsettling hyperreality.
Everything in “Blink Twice” feels intentionally wrong. The style is quite jarring, with a roughness that is almost unnerving to watch. The camera angles are odd, the editing jagged, as Kravitz and editor Kathryn J. Schubert construct scenes as if they were all montaged, with seconds and even minutes falling out. The images created by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra are saturated, overly bright, and have an almost burning clarity and sharpness; the sound design is also over the top and too sharp. This postcard-perfect setting becomes almost unbearable.
It’s a horrible truth that you can have all the nice things and still have a bad time. Jess finally realizes this after spending endless nights stuffing herself with fun, fun, fun while the girls run around the lawn in a champagne and psychedelic-induced frenzy after their mind-numbing dinners with the guys. Of course, something is wrong. They have no phones, no one knows what day it is, and mysterious injuries keep popping up. When Jess disappears and no one seems to remember she was even there, Frida must fight her way out of the fog and figure out what happened to her best friend.
Kravitz nails the social analysis and dark, satirical tone, but when the film becomes a horror/suspense thriller, her directing falters. There are some dynamic shots and compositions and obvious nods to her inspirations, but the suspense element and her ability to stage a horror sequence are lacking. She doesn’t shy away from the ugly truth at the heart of her story, but Kravitz misjudges the careful balancing of “conceal” and “reveal” necessary in horror filmmaking, making the mistake of showing us the monster clearly, forgetting that what the audience can’t see is much scarier than what they can.
Despite its flaws, Kravitz’s Blink Twice demonstrates a directorial vision that, at least cinematically, is brimming with creative, daring choices (narratively, the script is full of ideas that are rather superficial and absurd). It’s a fine first attempt, and it draws fantastic performances from Ackie, Arjona and especially Tatum, with his quiet, seductive menace boiling over impressively.
However, Kravitz never quite gets to what she wants to say about sex, power and revenge. A deeply cynical conclusion at the end of the film undermines any “empowerment” themes that might naturally flow from this story. It’s a pretty tall order to successfully mix righteous anger, sarcastic humor and a fist-pumping “girl power” narrative, if that’s even what she wants to do (it remains a mystery). Ultimately, “Blink Twice” lacks a certain emotion and gravitas that would underpin this whole endeavor and prevent it from feeling so hollow. But the relentless cynicism robs the film of any impactful meaning. Maybe that’s the point, but it doesn’t feel good.
