‘Are you having a good time?’ It’s a refrain heard constantly throughout Blink Twice, always delivered by men to women as a thinly veiled threat. For the audience, the answer is never in doubt. Best known as an actor for Mad Max: Fury Road, The Batman and TV’s High Fidelity, Zoë Kravitz delivers a supremely entertaining directorial debut – a twisty-turny crowd-pleaser that’s as confident with its thrills and surprises as it is with its deftly handled sexual politics. Intelligent, funny, gory and deeply cinematic, it’s a constantly shifting delight that marks Kravitz as a storyteller of huge promise.
Originally titled ‘Pussy Island’, which hints at the film’s boldness but belies its sophistication, Blink Twice centres on Frida (Lady Macbeth’s Naomi Ackie, terrific), a waitress with ambitions to build a nail-design brand. Along with pal Jess (Alia Shawkat), she finds herself invited to the private island of disgraced billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum, fully understanding the assignment). Joining a fun gang of tech bros (Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment. Levon Hawke, Simon Rex) and party girls (Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel,Trew Mullen), Frida and Jess are plunged into a high-end world of luxury: gourmet dining, designer drugs, complimentary clothes, and sheets with a thread count higher than Stephen Fry’s IQ.
Early on, Kravitz over-indulges on the indulgence. Much screen time is expended on glasses of champagne being topped up, blunts being smoked and kick-ass parties, a kind of Saltburn in the tropics. But just when the extravagance starts to drag, the filmmaker escalates the drama. Big time.
Zoë Kravitz’s thriller is both brainfood and a blast
To explain any more about how this all develops is to spoil the real joys of Blink Twice. Kravitz and co-screenwriter (and High Fidelity compadre) ET Feigenbaum build up the weirdness and questions at a dizzying rate. Why does the steak juice Frida drips onto her pure white dress later vanish? What is in the bright red gift bags? Who is the maid who keeps taunting Frida with the phrase ‘red rabbit’? Where has Jess gone? How this all comes together is as delicious as it is unexpected as it is frightening.
From the opening pull-focus shot on a bright green frog, Kravitz is in complete command of her palette: from striking colour-coordinated set design, to bursts of dynamic camera movement, to some hugely effective needle drops (cue James Brown’s ‘People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul’ and Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’).
But even more impressive is her total control of tone. Kravitz expertly flits between tension, horror, black comedy and social satire, sometimes delivering all four simultaneously. It’s a film about the abuses of power, the dangers of being a woman in a man’s world and the importance of female solidarity, but is never didactic, just gripping. In short, Blink Twice is both brainfood and a blast.
Out worldwide Aug 23.