Blink Twice

This article is about the 2024 film. For other uses, see Blink Twice (disambiguation).

Blink Twice is a 2024 American psychological thriller film directed and produced by Zoë Kravitz (in her directorial debut) from a script she wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum. The film stars Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum (who also produced), Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan, Geena Davis, and Alia Shawkat. It tells the story of a group of people invited to the private island of a billionaire tech mogul as something strange happens with the attendees.

Blink Twice
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Zoë Kravitz
Written by	Zoë Kravitz E.T. Feigenbaum
Produced by	Bruce Cohen Tiffany Persons Garret Levitz Zoë Kravitz Channing Tatum
Starring	Naomi Ackie Channing Tatum Christian Slater Simon Rex Adria Arjona Kyle MacLachlan Haley Joel Osment Geena Davis Alia Shawkat
Cinematography	Adam Newport-Berra
Edited by	Kathryn J. Schubert
Music by	Chanda Dancy
Production companies	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Free Association this is important Bold Choices
Distributed by	Amazon MGM Studios (United States) Warner Bros. Pictures (international)
Release dates	August 8, 2024 (2024-08-08) (DGA Theater) August 23, 2024 (2024-08-23) (United States)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$20 million
Box office	$46.4 million

Blink Twice premiered at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on August 8, 2024, and was released in the United States on August 23 by Amazon MGM Studios through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. The film has grossed $46 million worldwide on a $20 million production budget, and received generally positive reviews from critics.

Plot

Animal-themed nail artist and cocktail waitress Frida works an exclusive event with her friend Jess. She encounters billionaire tech mogul Slater King, who recently stepped down as CEO for unspecified past behavior and invites them both to his private island.

There, Slater's assistant Stacy confiscates their phones. In attendance are Slater's friends and business partners: photographer Vic, private chef Cody, DJ Tom, and college graduate Lucas. The three other female guests include: reality show star Sarah, aspiring app developer Camilla, and lawyer/stoner Heather. The women are treated with lavish rooms, gift bags of perfume, potent hallucinogenic drugs, and a holiday experience, enhanced by high-end meals and cocktails prepared by Cody.

Frida clashes with Sarah over Slater's attention while Jess notices memory lapses. All of the local workers sport the same snake tattoo, and Frida has strange encounters with a maid who seems to recognize her and calls her "Red Rabbit".

Slater's therapist Rich visits and receives a red gift bag. During a night of partying, Jess is bitten by a snake and later tells Frida she wants to leave. At breakfast, Frida notices that Lucas smells like the women's perfume. While the men are away fishing, Frida discovers a room with dozens of identical red gift bags.

Frida is tricked into drinking snake venom by the maid and begins remembering strange events. She realizes that Jess is missing, although none of the other women remember her at all. Alarmed, Frida investigates and learns of a flower indigenous to the island capable of wiping memories that has been incorporated into their food and perfume. She convinces Sarah of what is happening and gets her to drink the venom, an antidote to the flower's effects.

The men return as Frida and Sarah grow more paranoid. The pair trick the other women, including Stacy, into drinking shots of the venom to restore their memories. Frida sneaks into Slater's office to retrieve their phones, only to find they are out of both service and power.

Frida's memories fully return, revealing that the men have been sexually assaulting them every night and wiping their memories using the flower. When Jess's memories could not be erased due to the venom, they killed her. Frida also finds polaroids featuring different women and men with red gift bags, revealing that Slater is inviting guests to rape people regularly and gifting them perfume to use when they are away from the island.

Frida and Sarah attempt to buy time for themselves as Camilla and Heather's memories return, leading Camilla to stab Tom to death while Heather badly injures Vic before being fatally shot by Stan, Slater's security guard and former Marine. Slater kills Camilla and the men hide in Slater's villa where he mocks Lucas for choosing to be inactively complicit in the abuse by doing nothing.

Stacy attacks Frida, preferring to be ignorant of the men's behavior, which forces Frida to stab her to death. Stan chases Frida but is bludgeoned to death by Sarah, who takes his gun. Cody escapes to the woods but is presumably killed by Sarah. In the villa, Lucas tries to escape but is mistakenly shot in a trap set for Slater by Frida and Sarah. Afterward, Slater traps Frida in the villa. It is revealed that Frida had been on the island the year before and experienced the same events; she was assaulted by Slater, bit off Vic's pinky finger and scarred her head on a rock before her memories were wiped. The maid had recognized Frida from her red rabbit fingernails.

When Slater leaves the villa to search for Sarah, Frida laces his vape with the memory-erasing perfume. The effects make him forget the previous events and panic upon seeing the bodies. Slater slips and knocks himself unconscious as the villa catches fire. Frida escapes seamingly dragging Sarah to safety, leaving Vic and Slater to die. A few moments later it is revealed that Frida actually saved Slater and let Sarah and Vic to die in the fire.

Some time later, Rich encounters a noticeably disoriented Slater. It's revealed Frida is now married to Slater and is CEO of his company, all while drugging his vape with the flower to keep him compliant.

Cast

• Naomi Ackie as Frida, animal-themed nail artist and cocktail waitress
• Channing Tatum as Slater King, billionaire tech mogul
• Alia Shawkat as Jess, Frida's bestfriend
• Christian Slater as Vic, a photographer
• Simon Rex as Cody, private chef
• Adria Arjona as Sarah, reality show star
• Haley Joel Osment as Tom
• Liz Caribel as Camilla, aspiring app developer
• Levon Hawke as Lucas
• Trew Mullen as Heather, lawyer and stoner
• Geena Davis as Stacy, Slater's assistant
• Kyle MacLachlan as Rich
• Cris Costa as Stan
• María Elena Olivares as badass maid
• Saul Williams as emcee
• Tiffany Persons as interviewer
• Aaron Himelstein as asshole manager
• Zoë Kravitz as swanky stewardess

Production

Writer-director Zoë Kravitz

Zoë Kravitz started writing Blink Twice under the working title Pussy Island in 2017. In June 2021, Kravitz announced that she would make her directorial debut with the film from a script co-written with E.T. Feigenbaum. Channing Tatum signed on to star and, at the Cannes Film Market, MGM won the distribution rights as Naomi Ackie was cast as Frida, the film's lead role. The rest of the cast was announced from May to June 2022, with Jordan Harkins and Stacy Perskie joining the film as executive producers.

Filming began on June 23, 2022, with production occurring in Yucatán and Quintana Roo, Mexico. In January 2024, the film's title was changed from Pussy Island to Blink Twice; Kravitz explained that issues formed with the Motion Picture Association (MPA) "not wanting to put it on a poster, or a billboard, or a kiosk; movie theaters not wanting to put it on a ticket" but also mentioned, "Interestingly enough, after researching it, women were offended by the word, and women seeing the title were saying, 'I don't want to see that movie,' which is part of the reason I wanted to try and use the word, which is trying to reclaim the word, and not make it something that we're so uncomfortable using. But we're not there yet. And I think that's something I have the responsibility as a filmmaker to listen to."

Release

Blink Twice premiered at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on August 8, 2024, and it was released in the United States by Amazon MGM Studios on August 23, 2024, with Warner Bros. Pictures releasing the film internationally on August 21, 2024. On August 21, Amazon issued a trigger warning for the film on Twitter for "mature themes and depictions of violence – including sexual violence", which Variety noted was rare for a studio to do but part of a growing trend in Hollywood beyond MPA ratings. The warning was also attached before theatrical screenings.

Reception

Box office

Blink Twice has grossed $23.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $23.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $46.4 million.

In the United States and Canada, Blink Twice was released alongside The Crow and The Forge, and was projected to gross $7–8 million from 3,067 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $2.9 million on its first day, including an estimated $820,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $7.3 million, finishing fourth at the box office. The film made $4.8 million in its second weekend.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 74% of 215 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "A bold and memorable debut that thrusts Zoë Kravitz into the turf of directors to watch, Blink Twice is a live wire of a film." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave the film an overall positive score of 74% (including an average of 3 out of 5 stars), with 50% saying they would definitely recommend it.

Time Out's Ian Freer described the film as "one of the wildest rides of 2024", stating, "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." Writing for The Atlantic, Shirley Li labeled the film "a sharp and exciting debut with a strong emotional point of view", while Peter Travers praised it as a promising directorial debut despite its predictability. Wendy Ide of The Guardian rated the film 4 out of 5 stars, lauding it as "slickly efficient", "highly entertaining", and "visually rich". She notes that while some elements of the screenplay may not withstand rigorous scrutiny, the "glorious savagery" of the final act more than compensates for it.

In a review for RogerEbert.com, Peyton Robinson gave the film 1 out of 4 stars, stating that it fails to meaningfully engage with its themes about "the sinister capabilities of rich white men." She criticizes the writing as a "chop shop of buzzwords" that lacks depth and nuance, merely calling out issues without exploring them, making it "an affirmation of a tired, simple narrative toolbox being sold as unflinching feminist grit." Robinson describes the film's humor as "unfunny" and ineffective, stating it doesn't earn laughs or manage serious topics with intelligence. She praises the performances, especially Tatum's and Ackie's, but ultimately concludes that the film is a "homespun exploitation" with a "pretentious conclusion", lacking the courage needed for impactful storytelling. Robinson's review for Blink Twice aligns with Ross McIndoe of Slant Magazine, who noted that the film "has thoughts about the danger that men can pose", but criticized it for offering only a surface-level understanding of these dynamics. Brooks Eisenbise of Chicago Reader called it "clumsy and overworked yet valiant endeavor" and asserted that as a thriller, "it's a cliched and badly paced mess." Odie Henderson of The Boston Globe argued that while the film attempts a feminist message, "it's ultimately just a slasher movie with a bunch of one-dimensional Final Girls." She notes that the plot unravels upon closer examination, and its slow pacing allows ample time to reflect on it while still in the theater, failing to maintain the brisk pacing necessary to suspend disbelief. Henderson highlights that the film's initial half presents a series of repetitive scenes where characters engage in drinking, substance use, and poolside lounging, and contends that Kravitz's reliance on these sequences fails to provide any visual intrigue or meaningful character development, making the film look like "a boring reality TV show."

External links

• Blink Twice at IMDb