Blink Twice (2024) - Zoe Kravitz’s stylised horror says too much all at once

                                                                                                        Credit: allocine.fr

There is a lot to like – and to be disgusted by – in Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice. A mashup of Get Out, The Menu and Midsommar, it does all of the above and more, artfully so – but, inevitably, it falls ever so slightly short of distinguishing itself from the latest wave of horror focused on a island vacation gone ominously wrong, or a host taking advantage of their guest.

Naomi Ackie is Frida, a cocktail waitress barely getting by, who strikes gold when the tech billionaire Slater King (a fantastic performance from Channing Tatum) invites her out of the blue onto his recently purchased private island at the fundraising gala she is working at. Frida and friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) are smitten by this opportunity to escape – it’s all fun and games, after all. But as time starts to warp on the island, and things begin to go missing, Frida realises Slater and his group of friends aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Blink Twice is visually stunning to say the least, a bright palette of wonderfully diverse colours that is no doubt the motor for a wild ride of a film. The cast is also certainly a force to be reckoned with. Ackie and Shawkat are excellent at playing the classic excitable-turned-worried trope, and Adria Arjona stuns as Sarah, another guest on the island in whom Frida finds an ally. Geena Davis, Kyle MacLachlan and Levon Hawke are all equally good, though Christian Slater is criminally underused as Vic, Slater’s sketchy right hand man who takes constant Polaroids with a pinkie-less hand, source of much mystery. Time is unclear, emphasised by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra’s slightly woozy camerawork, and aggressive cuts peppered throughout the film at the most inordinate of times. The girls are confused, asking drunkenly what day it is as things start to take a turn for the worse – but then again, so are we. At times, there are too many loose ties, too many plot points that need to be clarified - Kravitz’s script, co-written with E. T. Feigenbaum, almost wants to cover all of the injustices in the world in one, figure out all the possible endings to a story like this one. But then again, perhaps this is the point. Where Blink Twice excels however is in its attention to the smallest of details – disturbingly so, you’ll never look at the girls’ dresses in the same way once the credits roll.