Zoë Kravitz is building an impressive career for herself as an entertainment-industry hyphenate: actor, producer, musician, and now writer/director with Blink Twice (2024). The latest entry in a new horror-thriller subgenre tackling the insidious power imbalances of late-state capitalism, the film starts innocently enough. Aspiring actresses Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat), working a swanky fund-raising event as waitresses, sneakily quick-change into gowns to mingle with the wealthy guests. Frida is obsessed with sexy billionaire tech bro Slater King (Channing Tatum), and manufactures a meet cute, leading to a once-in-a-lifetime invitation: to join King’s entourage on a private-jet flight to his personal island. There, party shenanigans ensue, but it isn’t long before Jess senses something slightly off about their good fortune — a worry that Frida soon comes to share, as their increasingly surreal circumstances dramatically deteriorate into terror.
By now, fictional characters ought to know better than to venture to the glamorous island retreats of powerful billionaires. But one can hardly blame Blink Twice for joining a lucrative filmic trend. It’s a juicy theme, not to mention a timely one, likely to resonate with a viewing public increasingly fed up with obscene wealth inequality. Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum render the scenario even more topical by confronting society’s the squicky gender dynamics that tend to accompany sociopathic “elites.” These thematic twists aren’t entirely unexpected, given the set-up, but the script is smartly crafted, laying the requisite bread crumbs to lead the narrative down its dark path. Ackie, Shawkat, and Tatum are surrounded by shrewdly selected supporting players; Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel, Geena Davis, Levon Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Trew Mullen, Haley Joel Osment, Simon Rex, and Christian Slater round out the hedonistic entourage perfectly. In the end, it may not be doing anything surprising, and occasionally it loses its handle on a disturbing tone with lurches into jarring humor. But overall, Blink Twice hits its targets squarely, successfully joining the ranks of grim sociopolitical allegory in the vein of Bodies Bodies Bodies, Ready or Not, the Knives Out movies, and The White Lotus, among others.
