“Blink Twice” wants to be a sleek, stylish horror movie about a rich man’s private island and the guests who keep disappearing. It mostly gets there, but the execution keeps tripping over its own ambitions.
Naomi Ackie plays Frida, a cocktail waitress who catches the eye of tech billionaire Slater King at a fundraising gala. Slater invites her and her friend Jess to his private island, along with a rotating cast of wealthy, attractive strangers: Adria Arjona’s reality star Sarah, Alia Shawkat’s fellow server Jess, Simon Rex’s private chef Cody, Christian Slater’s photographer Vic, and Haley Joel Osment’s DJ Tom. The setup is simple and effective. The follow-through is less so.
Trailer, via Amazon MGM Studios.
The Island’s Rules
Slater’s assistant Stacy confiscates everyone’s phones the moment they arrive. That’s the first rule. The second rule is that the island’s workers all wear the same snake tattoo. The third rule is that the maid keeps calling Frida “Red Rabbit.” The fourth rule is that nothing stays hidden for long.
Frida clashes with Sarah over Slater’s intentions while Jess notices memory lapses. The women get gift bags of perfume, potent hallucinogens, and high-end meals prepared by Cody. It sounds like a dream vacation. It plays out like a slow burn.
“Are you having a good time?”
That’s the film’s tagline, and it lands as a genuine question rather than a joke. The problem is that the film spends so much time setting up dread that it doesn’t always deliver the payoff.
The Red Gift Bags
The turning point comes the next morning. Frida stumbles upon a hut filled with dozens of identical red gift bags. She then encounters the maid, who persuades her to drink snake venom from a bottle. Frida experiences fleeting flashbacks of disturbing events. The scene is tense, but the film doesn’t commit fully to its own logic. It teases a conspiracy and then pulls back.
At breakfast, the men announce they’re going fishing. While the women are getting facials, Frida realizes that Jess is missing. The other women don’t remember Jess at all. The film is asking us to believe that everyone forgot a person, and it never quite explains how that forgetting works.
Sarah finds a lighter with Jess’s name inscribed on it, but the scene cuts away before we see what happens next. It’s a tease, and it leaves the film’s central mystery unresolved.
A Directorial Debut
Zoë Kravitz directs from a script she wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum. This is her directorial debut, and the film shows it. The camera work is confident, the casting is strong, and the premise is smart. What holds the film back is pacing. The middle stretch drags, and the tension built up in the first half doesn’t always pay off in the second.
Ackie carries the film. She makes Frida feel present and grounded in a world that keeps slipping away. Tatum plays Slater as charming and unsettling in equal measure. Shawkat gets the best supporting work as Jess, whose skepticism grounds the proceedings even when the plot goes sideways.
The film grossed $48 million worldwide on a $20 million production budget. That’s a solid return, though the numbers don’t tell the whole story of a movie that’s often clever but rarely terrifying.
A Solid Premise, A Shaky Payoff
“Blink Twice” is a promising debut that under-delivers. The setup is strong, the cast is excellent, and the direction shows real promise. But the film never fully commits to its own nightmare logic. It teases a conspiracy and then pulls back. It raises questions about memory and identity and then lets them drift away.
The film is at its best when it trusts its own premise. It’s at its weakest when it tries to explain itself. That’s a common trap for a first-time director, and Kravitz falls into it here.
“Blink Twice” is a film worth seeing for its ambition and its cast, but it’s a film that leaves you wanting more than it delivers. It’s a solid entry in the genre, but it doesn’t quite reach greatness.
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