Blink Twice

Grade: C

If you squint and force it hard enough, you can come up with parallels between any two things. I couldn’t believe how much people were waxing philosophical about how similar Barbie and Oppenheimer were, just because they came out on the same weekend. They would never be mentioned in the same breath otherwise. However, I’ve just seen two in a row, both out on the same day, that do warrant comparison. Blink Twice and Strange Darling are both thrillers with unsettling elements where not everything is what it seems, with an angle of #metoo related abuse. After being so entranced by Strange Darling, I was hoping for more of the same with this weekend’s cinematic offerings. Unfortunately, Blink Twice is a convoluted, jumbly mess. The plot twist is complicated, far-fetched, and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Remember the wave of “eat the rich” movies? It included Knives Out, its sequel Glass Onion, Parasite, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, and Saltburn. You could put Blink Twice in a genre called “eat the patriarchy.” It ends with a vindicating narrative mic drop that I appreciated in theory, but it raises too many logistical questions. Channing Tatum is better here than he was in the recent Fly Me to the Moon, but I still didn’t like either film. He plays Slater King, a tech billionaire. Frida (Naomi Ackie, Whitney Houston from I Wanna Dance With Somebody) and Jess (Alia Shawkat, from The Listener and Being the Ricardos) sneak into one of his exclusive receptions, and surprisingly quickly, get invited to fly with him and his entourage to his private island for a few days.

It feels like they’re there longer. They probably are. Nothing happens for so long, except for one scene after another of partying. With as much smoking that takes place, only one person there has a lighter. It’s set in the present day, yet a character continually takes Polaroids, so it can come into play later when pictures from years ago are discovered. The supporting cast includes Haley Joel Osment, Christian Slater, Kyle MacLachlan, and Geena Davis, who plays a perpetually nervous character. There’s a weird through-line about the placement of a chair in the room. They can’t seem to be satisfied with where it should live.

The climax awkwardly shoehorns in humor amidst some grisly violence. None of the comedy works. There’s a lengthy Talking Killer monologue, which has been planted in movies for decades, where the villain yaks up a storm, buying enough time for the hero/ine to find a way out of their predicament. Here, the character stops in the middle of it, sees the infamous chair, and says “I like it there. It works.” Another character, beaten beyond recognition by a rock to the head, lays on a couch drinking a cocktail, unintelligibly grunting out one-liners. Blink Twice is stagnant for much of its runtime, only to become an overblown disappointing mess. Its original working title is a bit on-the-nose and spoilery. I’d rather not print it here, for a couple reasons, but you can look it up.

Grade: C