Blink Twice

We've all seen questionable if not outright bizarre films which every now and then are produced; the list is not huge but interesting: "Bruno", "Babylon", "Very Bad Things", "Eraserhead", "Triangle of Sadness", most recently "Poor Things"and the like. So now we have a cross over of Jeffrey Epstein's island and "The Stepford Wives", with a little of "The Chef" and viola!, you have "Blink Twice", which is about as bizarre as any film can come. 

When tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) meets cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) at his fundraising gala, sparks fly. He invites her and her friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat) to join him and his friends including Sarah (Adria Arjona), Tracy (Geena Davis), Vic (Christian Slater), Cory (Simon Rex), Tom (Haley Joel Osment), Lucas (Levon Hawke), Heather (Trew Mullen) and others on a dream vacation on his private island. It's paradise. Wild nights blend into sun-soaked days and everyone's having a great time. Nobody wants this trip to end, but as strange things start to happen, Frida begins to question her reality. Something is wrong with this place. She'll have to uncover the truth if she wants to make it out of this party alive. 

Others to round out the cast are Kyle MacLachlan as Dr. Rich Stein, Liz Caribel as Camilla, Cris Costa as Stan, Maria Elena Olivares as badass maid, Saul Williams as emcee, Tiffany Persons as Interviewer and Ben Jacobson as Ben. 

This was surprising directed with clarity and foreboding by Zoe Kravitz. For being a filmmaker with absolutely no other experience, i.e. feature films, TV, shorts, etc, this was delineated with clarity, and her ability to showcase her actors' slow transition from simply enjoying one another's company to it being a cat-and-mouse game including a slow progression, was brilliant. She is an actor and that certainly had to have been an element that helped her tremendously. And, since Tatum has a ton of experience and him being her boyfriend in real life also has to have assisted her as well. Where this film got bogged down was with the writing. It was written by Zoe Kravitz (TV) and E.T. Feigenbaum (TV), and their TV experience was writing one episode of the same TV show, so their writing experience is extremely low.There were areas of the script that were disjointed which caused the story to become a bit bogged down. Since this was Kravitz's film, she should've passed the screenplay to a much more experienced writer that could've taken this very strange story and made more sense of it. It wasn't a total wash--the ending, although bittersweet, was something that the audience wouldn't see coming, but the getting there was difficult at best. The cast was a great ensemble of actors, especially Tatum and Ackie and for that reason it did create more of an ease to watch. It is rated 'R' for a reason: it's gratuitous everything. Certainly by halfway through the film, with the exception of Frida and maybe Sarah,  it was difficult to feel sorry for anyone. They all deserved each other due to their insecurities and total selfishness. Maybe Kravitz needs more experience, but this film suffered. 

If you're into the bizarre, you will revel with this, however, if you're looking for more of a polished film with tighter writing, you might want to pass. Kravitz does have a future as a director which will add to that increasing list of actors who become directors--she should just get another writer. 

Out of 4 Stars: 2.5                                       Rated:R                                                  102mins.