Blink Twice (Kravitz, 2024)

Written by Tom Augustine.

The much-debated subgenre of the ‘social thriller’, if you’re one of those who believes it exists at all, was popularised around the time of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us, but has existed in some latent form for decades before those films. Indeed, at the time of Get Out’s release, Peele branded the film as such and simultaneously curated a series of films under the title ‘The Art of the Social Thriller’. Among the films included in the series were Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary’s Baby, the original Candyman, Funny Games, The Shining, even The ‘Burbs – films that operate within horror or thriller frameworks and that generally point to or unpack oppression and injustice in society, as each of those films can be thought to be doing, through certain lenses. Put another way, it is not the villains in these films specifically who are the source of evil, but rather the society around them that foster their villainy. It’s a subgenre that’s been met with as much interest as controversy; for as many people as there are lambasting the idea that horror specifically hasn’t always been in conversation with society at large, there have been enormous audiences that have flocked to horrors and thrillers that elevate their social themes from subtext to text. Peele, and Get Out in particular, have had an ongoing ripple effect in the kinds of genre movies we’ve seen made in recent years, though few have ever gotten close to his particular brand of magic – think the Candyman or Invisible Man remakes, or Leave the World Behind, Antebellum, Promising Young Woman or Sorry to Bother You. 

Actress-turned-filmmaker Zoë Kravitz’ debut, Blink Twice, can very much be thought of as existing within this framework. In watching the film, one can practically see frames from Get Out (and perhaps Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion and Shyamalan’s Old) pinned to a moodboard somewhere. Also serving co-writing duties with her High Fidelity series scribe E.T. Feigenbaum, Kravitz’ film tells the story of Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat), two best friends and flatmates scrounging out a living as cocktail waitresses for the lavish parties of the rich and famous, including disgraced billionaire Slater King (Kravitz’ real-life partner Channing Tatum), with whom Frida has something of an unhealthy obsession. A seemingly chance encounter with King one night leads to a romantic spark between Frida and the billionaire, who offers to whisk her and Jess away to his private island, where he’s been hiding out since an undisclosed, #MeToo-adjacent scandal ensued. There, Frida and Jess find what appears at first to be a tropical paradise of sunbathing, designer drugs and five-star meals, accompanied by King’s cavalcade of hangers-on, played by actors like Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle Maclachlan and Geena Davis(!), as well as a group of attractive young women including Hit Man’s Adria Arjona as Sarah, an ex-contestant on a reality show that sounds like a cross between Survivor and Girls Gone Wild. As time starts to pass, too quickly, it would seem, and Frida and Jess begin forgetting huge swathes of time, the pair begin to suspect all may not be right with this tropical getaway.

Actor Zoë Kravitz takes a spin in the director’s chair with this diverting, if predictable, tropics-set social thriller. Kravitz’ deft hand with composition and editing, alongside a stellar cast, ensure Blink Twice maintains interest even as its plotting and messaging get muddy.

If you’ve watched social thrillers of the past, it’s pretty easy to get on Blink Twice’s wavelength and to imagine where it’s ultimately headed. The climactic reveal isn’t surprising, as such, but rather depressingly predictable – not necessarily a bad thing for this particular film. Where the frisson does come in Blink Twice is in Kravitz’ confident, slick direction as a who’s who of some of the most buzzed about actors of the modern day spar off each other. Almost everyone in the supporting cast has some sort of indie cred, whether it be established legends like Maclachlan and Davis, older performers enjoying something of a renaissance like Rex, Osment and Slater, or the new kids building a respectable body of work like Ackie, Arjona and Shawkat. It’s an extremely fun cast, who all seem to be having a great time, lifting the weight of the story off the shoulders of a script that occasionally strains both credibility and structural strength. At the centre of the story are the three women, Frida, Jess and Sarah, and Ackie, Shawkat and particularly Arjona are delivering fantastic work here. As Frida, Ackie is tasked with presenting fragile optimism, abject desire and, later, barely-suppressed terror, a challenge she rises to very well. As for Arjona, well, it’s less accurate to say that she steals the show as she wrenches every scene away from her co-stars with both hands. If Linklater’s lovely Hit Man was a genuine starmaking turn for the actress, Blink Twice is just another reminder of her volcanic talent. In a lesser thesp’s hands the role may have appeared rote – a standoffish glamazon who is, in every sense of the word, a survivor – but Arjona brings subtlety, vulnerability and a gleam of menace to every scene. Her performance alone justifies the ticket price.

As the film’s very obvious big bad (a fact entirely spoiled by the trailers for the film, if it were ever in doubt), Channing Tatum is otherwise excellent, utilising his natural charisma and general ‘good guy’ energy to fiendish ends, presenting a character who has depths that the film sadly only glances at, rather than properly investigates. This is a symptom of the film in general – a film once titled Pussy Island, a title that suggests a richer and more transgressive item that what we have here – one that, like so many social thrillers in the wake of Get Out, doesn’t quite have the incisiveness to actually get a grip on the questions it poses. The fact that Frida, a demonstrably working class black woman, cultivates an obsession with King is an element that the film makes gestures toward explaining, but never fully articulates, a fatal flaw. There’s a strange itch at the heart of Blink Twice that doesn’t get scratched – in what world is there such a thing as a ‘charming’ or ‘handsome’ billionaire in 2024? Are we to believe Frida is so naive as to take King at face value? There’s potential here for something more daring, but as the film closes in on its unwieldy denouement we come to understand that Kravitz, the daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz, ultimately is lacking in the ‘eat the rich’ perspective that she so clearly wants to key into. It’s damning when the closest corollary one can find is the woeful directorial work of Emerald Fennell. In the end, what so many of these supposedly rich-skewering modern thrillers, whether that be Triangle of Sadness or The Menu or Saltburn, seem to misunderstand is that the social foment of the modern era seeks to burn the structure to the ground, not install new figures atop it. A late-breaking Beyoncé needle-drop speaks volumes, unintentionally – here’s a figure that, despite being a billionaire herself, has nevertheless in recent years tried to eschew that image by aligning herself with working class imagery and ideas. However you feel about Beyoncé and the ‘black excellence’ movement in general, it’s difficult to make a case for it as a positive endpoint for this kind of movie, one that attempts to encompass the misery of late capitalism. At the core of that presentation, ultimately, is an assertion that only the rich (or those who wish to be rich) can really key into – ‘the best revenge is your paper’.

Blink Twice is in cinemas now.

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