Blink Twice Review: Zoë Kravitz's Directorial Debut Starring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum Is a Feminist Get Out

At the start of Blink Twice, Frida (Naomi Ackie), a young woman who barely makes ends meet waitressing for a caterer, suddenly finds herself jetting off to a dream vacation, perhaps even a dream romance.

Working one evening at a plush event — the vast space is pristine white, floor to ceiling, like the insides of a giant Apple package — she meets tech-giant Slater King (Channing Tatum). An erotic spark leaps instantly from one to the other, even though Frida is well aware that King is currently embarked on an expensive mea culpa PR campaign — a moral rebranding to correct allegations of inappropriate behavior. In other words, that spark could produce a conflagration.

But Frida isn't worried. King invites her and a friend (Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat) to fly with him, along with his entourage and a few other party-hungry young women, to an exclusive island compound. There they'll enjoy the airy expansiveness of a bright-red hacienda, along with a huge pool and private accommodations stocked with all the athleisure guests might need during their stay. (How long are they staying? No one asks or cares.)

Oh: And in each bathroom is a bottle of an alluring fragrance, Desideria — a name that suggests both desire and hysteria. There must be tropical notes and — what else?

Here's an occasion when you wish Hollywood had taken up the "Odorama" process that director John Waters introduced in Polyester. Because you know instinctively that Desideria isn't something to be sprayed in the aisles of Saks.

In short order, at any rate, everyone is drinking, drugging, laughing, dancing. (After all, no one came here pretending it would be Reese Witherspoon's book club.) At night the women run barefoot beneath the moon in white, filmy Grecian dresses — you’d think Isadora Duncan had become an influencer. Then one of the women suddenly stops to ask: Why are we always running?

The answer to that turns out to be just awful — terrifying.

Blink Twice, directed with striking assurance by Zoë Kravitz (who’s engaged to Tatum), can best be thought of as a feminist Get Out. It’s a wild, weird horror ride that borders on fairy-tale nightmare and maybe even biblical allegory (the island is home to a snake that, like Satan in the Garden of Eden, can make a hell out of paradise).

But no need to go any further on that score. If Frida isn’t put off by King’s raucous, moldy buddies (Christian Slater and Haley Joel Osment), she certainly ought to be disturbed by a maid who keeps smiling at her and saying what sounds like “red rabbit.”

And then there’s Slater’s sister and factotum Stacy (a skittering, funny Geena Davis), who runs around in a panic, clutching swag bags. (If you're old enough, and gay enough, you'll recognize this as the Agnes Moorehead role.)

By the time Frida realizes that one of the women has up and vanished, it’s way too late to ask about check-out time.

Kravitz herself takes too long to let you know what evil is lurking behind the curtain. Instead she indulgently lulls you with a lush production design and a succession of wine-soaked dinners and boozy brunches. It’s like a slightly sinister HGTV special.

But she doesn’t pull her punches when it comes to the big twist: The movie is uncomfortably, unconsolingly brutal. Unlike Get Out's reveal (a grotesque joke involving brain transplants), the violence here is startlingly concrete in its punishing cruelty.

It’s no spoiler to go in knowing that the women are the victims of that violence (although if you want to feel sorry for Osment, go right ahead). The shocks and suspense are ultimately less important than the movie’s stinging moral indignation — its disgust.

The acting is very good, top to bottom, including María Elena Olivares as that maid. Tatum, ingratiatingly sexy and lethally cool, gives his best performance since 2014’s Foxcatcher — a different kind of horror story.

Blink Twice is in theaters now.