Frida met Slater King a year before, at the company\u2019s annual gala; she\u2019s a server at a fancy event venue, and the time has again come for her to work the King Tech Gala. \u201cDon\u2019t forget to smile,\u201d her boss reminds her, and she does, and they reconnect nimbly. At the evening\u2019s end, he invites Frida and her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) to his private island, where endless days of sun, food, drink and drugs await. At first, it seems too good to be true; later, that is revealed to be quite the understatement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kravitz, it is my pleasure to report, is not making some casual vanity project; she\u2019s an honest-to-god filmmaker, formally inventive and with a firm command of tone. The dark undercurrents of the festivities start brewing almost immediately, and Kravitz has a real gift for finding ominous visuals and shock edits, and a way of shooting close-ups that make the most common sights and sounds seem vaguely threatening. The picture is also a marvel of aural encompassing\u2014every creak, whisper, and rumble is played for maximum effect (the sound designer is Jon Flores), and she finds the perfect needle-drops to match the shifting moods, from the recurring James Brown themes to the virtuoso bad vibes of the \u201cAin\u2019t Nobody\u201d dance sequence. (Kravitz and Feigenbaum previously worked together on the Hulu adaptation of High Fidelity<\/em>, which speaks to the picture\u2019s pop music bonafides.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while the broad strokes of the story she\u2019s telling are fairly predictable, she adds welcome wrinkles and unexpected detours. Early on, the script introduces a rival to Frida for Slater\u2019s affections\u2014Sarah, a reality TV refugee and thus something of a clich\u00e9, who seems constructed to obstruct and thwart our protagonist\u2019s aims and muddle her slowly-dawning realizations. But in a refreshing swerve to expectations, she\u2019s right behind Frida, putting things together right alongside her, and transforming a wheezy competitive relationship into a team-up. It helps that the role is filled by Adria Arjona, proving herself a real-deal movie star after the conflagration that was Hit Man<\/em>; she adds her own texture and nuance, and her comic timing is razor-sharp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the supporting characters are more sketches than people, though Geena Davis is enjoyably manic, and Christian Slater is well cast as an enabling sycophant (that air of menace he always carries is especially handy). The satire is a touch heavy-handed at times, and the payoff is not exactly subtle, but fuggit, these are not subtle times; sure, it follows Glass Onion<\/em> as another story of a Zucker\/Musk\/sociopathic-techbro-dickhead-of-your-choice on a private island story, but the vague psychobabble and crypto talk have the authenticity of overhead bullshit (even if the quips of the climax are a bit too cute for the dark territory we\u2019ve landed in). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kravitz\u2019s sense of pace is also laudable; she doesn\u2019t waste a second getting this thing on its feet, and in the punchy middle stretch, she cleverly uses the cinematic language of montage to create a necessary narrative bluriness (\u201cI never know what day it is\u201d first seems like a confession of bliss, and soon sounds like an indictment). Perhaps most importantly, she\u00a0plays fair with the big twists, sprinkling little crumbs from scene one so nothing feels like cheating. Once it all becomes clear, it\u2019s jaw-dropping. And then we\u2019re waiting for the bloodbath, which she cheerfully, skillfully delivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Blink Twice” is in theaters this weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/blink-twice2-1024x561.jpg\")
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Channing is similarly well-used. Kravitz wrote her fiancee a role that unsurprisingly plays to his strengths: warmth, charisma, a slight aloofness. He sells the intensity of their initial attraction, as well as the good-guy affectations he casually deploys in her company (\u201cTherapy changed me life,\u201d he says, solemnly). But ice-cold blank slate of his face when his true nature comes out is chilling, as is the memorable scene of him saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d over and over, workshopping the volume and emphasis, trying to make it sound convincing, and realizing he\u2019s fundamentally incapable.<\/p>\n\n\n\nB<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n