There’s a sharp and knowing sense of the zeitgeist running through “Blink Twice”, the directorial debut of actress Zoë Kravitz. Too much, at times. It’s there in the soundtrack, some of the choices which Kravitz has commented on like a killer needle-drop from one of the songs off Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ album in a climactic moment. It’s there in the moments of stylised montages where characters seem to float through several scenes buoyed by potent hallucinogenic drugs. It’s also there in the themes of excess and avarice as we watch the characters become immersed in the lives of the rich and famous, and the social indignities that come with that. And it’s especially there in the exploration of what contemporary womanhood looks like in a capitalistic and patriarchal world where more is always better.
As an exercise in mood, “Blink Twice” is a promising debut in theme and allegory, though it’s often more mixed. There’s a rising sense as the drama unfolds in the drama – sometimes restless, often stylised, occasionally amusing, intermittently thrilling and almost always easy to watch – that it’s not quite resolving the tension between social satire and social critique that feels fundamental in turning its curious social fable into something more robust than a passing curiosity. By the end of the film, Naomi Ackie’s Frida (a nail artist and cocktail waitress) goes through a psychological journey that feels firmly enmeshed in contemporary issues of women’s oppression with an ending that feels urgently waiting for myriad conversations on what restorative justice looks like. And yet, there’s a feeling that even when it’s ticking the boxes of this kind of social justice thriller that “Blink Twice” is not quite reaching its best intentions.
Kravitz, who has been a long-time personification of Hollywood coolness, is a new addition to the long list of Hollywood A-listers from celebrity families moving from semi-famous actress to filmmaker. She’s been vocal enough on women’s issues that it makes sense that her debut film (she is also co-writer of the screenplay with E T Feigenbaum, a writer on her short-lived TV-show “High Fidelity”) would be a direct commentary on the state of women in the world. From the early moments of “Blink Twice”, even before we begin to get a sense of just what kind of gender critiques Kravitz might be up to, the film seems to be planting seeds of female solidarity amidst an uncaring world. There’s a charm in these early moments. We watch Frida and Jess (Alia Shawkat as Frida’s friend/roommate/colleague) give table service at an exclusive event that a recently disgraced and seemingly rehabilitated handsome billionaire is hosting. As much as the film is underlining the importance of the billionaire heartthrob Slater King (Channing Tatum), those early moments are also committed to giving texture to the girls’ friendship. It’s Jess’s birthday. The two girls steal away from their jobs to don stylish dresses and crash the event. Frida is saved after a mishap by a seemingly charming Slater. It’s all supplemented by this idea of the chemistry between Ackie and Shawkat whose work together becomes a sharp asset for “Blink Twice” feeling lived-in. But that’s a quality that feels less certain when it approaches its larger focus of a thriller by way of social critique. Here, it begins to feel faintly inert on the inside. Even as images within the film retain are often clever and compelling, the actual story feels too hollow to support the intentions of the filmmakers or the performers.
Early in “Blink Twice” we learn that Slater’s event is a return to public life. He’s taken time to commune with nature on a private island he’s bought to atone for harm he’s done in the past. We are never told what he is apologising for or why he’s stepped down. It leaves a gap in the story which is clearly deliberate but becomes part of a trend of the film’s inability to engage with the actual seediness of the rich underbelly that it seems to want to critique. It’s there in the zeitgeist ready sequences of debauchery on the island we meet when Frida and Jess are invited to tag along with Slater and his friends. There seems to be a knowing sense of familiarity for Kravitz who we could imagine getting stoned and lounging by the pool on a private island somewhere. There’s a needling tendency of “Blink Twice” to hyper-fixate on moments to which we should pay attention. Chickens on Slater’s island. Three mentions of the fear of forgetting before a third-act reveal that forgotten memories seem to abound on the island. A clear sense that the wide-eyed excitement that Frida, Jess and the three other girls on the island initially have at the wanton excess with Slater and his friends. But it is an excess that Kravitz’s camera loves. And it’s one she seems much more at home in clarifying than the sharp turn to sordidness that’s so central to the reveal of the latter half.
When the film turns on its axis to reveal the truth of the island, which the trailer suggests, the reveal feels too generic in its familiarity. Suddenly the thriller critique of “Blink Twice” feels more limp than inventive. The Indigenous characters on the island, often silent, feel flattened amidst the critique of male depravity as the film seems uncertain whether it can or should contemplate race as part of its critique. “Blink Twice” feels both incredibly tapped into the zeitgeist but unwilling to be truly honest about the real-world implications of its set-up. A white tech billionaire and his group of male friends, all white, travel to a small island he has bought where all the menial labour is done by Indigenous people. The girls, who are a mix of white, Hispanic and Black, are wined, dined and then terrorised. Yet, Kravitz has no comment on the racial dynamics of what this means, willing to only hyperfocus on a lens of male/female dynamics that ends up feeling trite.
It’s a confounding mismatch of intentions. Too much in the writing leaves the performers thrown asunder; so that even when they’re doing good it’s always with the awareness that they’re trying to beat back the tide of a screenplay that’s making things harder for them than they ought to be. Kravitz the director, for example, understands the depths of vividness in Naomi Ackie as a performer so a lot in the more frenetic final third of the film celebrates her expressiveness offering her multiple moments to take up space in the frame with multiple close-ups. Even the film’s final shot knows that Ackie’s intelligent face is capable of conveying emotional clarity that could offer something thoughtful. But it feels too half-hearted when the screenplay is depending so much on its performers to turn the elusive gaps of its story into something more legible.
Kravitz has skill for elements of fantasy and heightened excess. Billowing white skirts flowing in the wind as a group of girls run. A clever montage to show the passage of time and the hedonistic thrill of narcotics. It’s fun even when it’s unsettling. There’s promise of a compelling directorial career ahead. “Blink Twice” does not quite get there, but it offers enough thrills to be diverting.
Blink Twice is showing in local cinemas
