There’s a lot going on in Zoë Kravitz’s ambitious, temporarily successful directorial debut. After 103 minutes of sunlight, drugs, high-level violence, and (mostly) sublimated sexual desire, the viewer could easily be allowed to lie down in a dark room.
There’s a matryoshka effect here. The film is, in a way, about the exhausting pressure that comes from being asked to enjoy yourself. An impressively prominent cast plays visitors to a millionaire’s luxury island. The food is first-class. The drinks are lavish. Everyone is beautiful. But the opulence seems to bore them all. The film itself tries just as hard to entertain the people in the cinema. They, too, might end up yearning for a little less well-earned excess.
What we have here is The White Lotus in the vein of Get Out. Channing Tatum plays Slater King, a tech millionaire forced to apologize for an unspecified scandal. He will now retire from the business and retire to a luxury island. In a rougher part of the world, Frida (the great Naomi Ackie) scrolls through her phone on the toilet, comes across a video of King and harbors wishful thinking about a one-night stand. And lo and behold? The next day, she is working as a waitress at a posh event when she meets the magnate. He ends up inviting her to the island. She can barely contain her excitement.
You can hardly blame Kravitz for the extravagance of her casting. Kyle MacLachlan is here as Slater’s analyst. Geena Davis is chief organizer. Simon Rex and Christian Slater are on the team. And so on. Frida has a pleasant enough time at first, but as the days drag on, she begins to suspect that something is afoot. Why does the chambermaid keep muttering cryptic warnings? Why are her own memories getting jumbled?
There are clear references to the sinister dealings of Jeffrey Epstein, but only in a very vague and noncommittal style. You would hardly be able to say that Think Twice was a film about sexual abuse. It is certainly about the emptiness of the billionaire lifestyle – all those satirically overused descriptions of the kitchen – but there is nothing here that hasn’t been seen in a more caustic way in Triangle of Sadness or The Menu. As the film progresses, the decay becomes more convoluted and the harder it is to care.
A glossy packaging. However, the contents are not quite sufficient.
Blink Twice hits theaters on Friday, August 23
