Blink Twice (2024)

If this had been Zoë Kravitz's first novel as opposed to her Hollywood directorial debut, I suspect she would have been assigned an experienced editor who would have pointed out the conspicuous (and not particularly complex) changes she would have needed to make in order to make the material more compelling.

That clearly didn't happen here, so instead we get a sort of calling card demonstrating what she is good at and not so good at in this new role. 

 

She can get very good performances out of her cast and she knows how to work with the camera to build arresting visuals. But neither the screenplay nor the on-screen storytelling is quite as A-list as they seem to think they are.

There seem to me to be a pair of good reasons for making a psychological thriller. Firstly to demonstrate mastery of the form, that controlled interplay with audience speculative responses leading up to the reveal. And secondly to place within that form a story with wider human meaning, either on the level of individual existential concerns or on the more collective plane: social symbolism.

I don't believe Kravitz undertook this with a strong sense of how to deliver the former, beyond applying the obvious tropes, and any underlying message is blurry at best. This is exacerbated by the inherent sketchiness of not only the basic mechanism of the scenario, but also the characters, and their ethical underpinnings.

The version we saw came with a trigger warning that doubled as a spoiler. The plot does indeed possess a lot of potential for some seriously disturbing darkness, but largely dodges it at every key opportunity. This has been fashioned as entertainment not as intellectual or psychological stimulation and as entertainment the film is substantially successful.

Adria Arjona, playing an odd sort of stand-in, second tier protagonist is kind of emblematic of some of the on/off issues here. I remember concluding during Hit Man that while she can definitely play a role, I’m less convinced when she’s playing a role within a role (or perhaps only seeming to).

One fun aspect of the film is the primary location, the strikingly red Hacienda Temozón, just south of Mérida. I remember skyping with a friend who’d found himself as the only guest there during the swine flu panic, and got a great little laptop tour of the location.