The Scare Salon

I remember seeing the trailer for 2024’s Blink Twice ages ago while I was at the theater for another horror film. At the time, I thought it looked decent but didn’t feel any burning urge to watch it. I suppose this is mostly because, as far as horror movies go, I tend to like more gothic, weird, supernatural fare, and Blink Twice looked more like a “sunlit vacation gone wrong” scenario, which generally isn’t my bag.

But a couple of months later, I noticed the film had popped up on Amazon Prime, and a few people recommended it to me, so I decided to give it a spin. Now, I feel kind of bad for initially dismissing it because it turned out to be a pretty entertaining flick.

Blink Twice is the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz, who originally wanted to call the film Pussy Island. This actually would have been rad considering the premise of the movie, but she backed down after female test audiences reacted badly to the name. Which I also get, honestly; I understand that Zoë was trying to push the envelope and reclaim a word that a lot of women don’t like, but I also understand why a lot of women wouldn’t go see a movie called that either, so it’s all kind of a wash. Now, had the movie been called Minge Island or Cooter Island, we might be onto something. Kidding…sort of.

Anyway, the story does tackle a fairly hot-button issue vis-à-vis rich white dudes being shitheads who will absolutely pay to abuse women if given the chance to get away with it and will act hilariously shocked when said women decide to turn the tables on them. Although the movie does take its time before revealing what’s actually happening on this idyllic island getaway, it’s not like it will be any surprise to viewers who have any familiarity with horror films at all. You know there’s some sketchy shit afoot, in other words, and you’re pretty sure you know the flavor of it; but it takes a while for the first shoe to drop, in other words. Which I didn’t mind, but your mileage may vary.

Our main character is Frida, played by Naomi Ackie. She’s a cocktail waitress who does specialty animal-themed nail art on the side. Her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) is also a waitress, and the pair are convinced that they’re going to make it big someday, somehow. The chemistry of these two is great, and really gets you invested in their friendship right away.

Not too long into the story, the women get the chance of a lifetime. The company they work for is catering a big fancy shindig attended by handsome, famous tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) and several of his wealthy, powerful bros; y’all know the kinds of douches I’m talking about. Slater has recently gone on the media circuit apologizing for some inappropriate but unexplained behavior; you’ll probably be able to deduce the gist of it, and this suspicion will be all but confirmed as the tale goes on. Slater seems genuinely contrite about his transgressions, though, and says he’s going to therapy and has completely changed his lifestyle, trying to make amends for his past shittiness. The public seems to be accepting of his mea culpa, especially since he’s stepped down as CEO of his company.

Frida appears to have something of an admiration-based crush on Slater from afar, and her friend Jess conspires to get Frida in front of her hero. Jess brings two cheap cocktail dresses to their serving gig, and when their employers aren’t looking, the women change out of their waitress duds and into the more glamorous outfits, all the better to sneak into the bigwigs’ private party. They kinda get busted almost immediately, but while running to escape, Frida breaks one of her heels and faceplants spectacularly, causing everyone in the room, including Slater, to notice her whether she wants them to or not.

Slater immediately seems very taken with Frida, though, breaking off her other heel so the two shoes will be even, then spending most of the rest of the evening talking soulfully to her while gazing fondly into her eyes. Frida can’t believe her good fortune; this dude appears completely smitten with her, ignoring the rest of the people at the party and laser-focusing only on her. Which seems very suspicious, but Frida is too swoony to notice.

At the end of the night, Slater leaves with his entourage, and an overwhelmed Frida realizes with some disappointment that she didn’t even get the guy’s number. But then, Slater comes rushing back into the now-deserted party, saying that they’re all going to his private island for a few days to chill by the pool and let their hair down. Would Frida and Jess like to come along? Even though this is setting off alarm bells in both their heads—I mean, they don’t know any of these people at all really—both women happily agree, though to their credit they do seem to realize they’re doing something incredibly reckless.

So just like that, Frida and Jess are on a small private plane, headed for a beautiful, tropical paradise in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of men and women they’ve only just met. What could possibly go wrong?

Turns out, not much at first, at least so it seems. The island is stupidly gorgeous, and each guest has their own fancy little vacation cabin, well-stocked with anything they could possibly need. Oddly, all the women are provided with identical white bikinis and sunhats, and everyone has to surrender their cell phones in the name of being “present” in the moment (uh oh), but no one thinks too much about this. They’re on vacation, baby!

The other male guests, by the way, consist of photographer Vic (Christian Slater), chef Cody (Simon Rex), party guy and DJ Tom (Haley Joel Osment), and young pretty boy Lucas (Levon Hawke, who is incidentally the son of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman). Slater’s therapist Rich (Kyle MacLachlan) also drops in from time to time.

As for the women, we have Sarah (Adria Arjona), a longtime star on a survival-type reality show; the perpetually stoned lawyer Heather (Trew Mullen); and Camilla (Liz Caribel), an app developer looking for Slater’s investment dollars. Slater also has a personal assistant named Stacy who is also his sister and is played by Geena Davis.

Everyone in the group seems super fun, and each day consists of relaxing lounges by the pool sipping expensive cocktails, and jockeying for Slater’s attention. In the evenings, Cody cooks up delicious gourmet dinners, and afterward, the gang breaks out the good drugs and runs amok on the island, laughing their faces off. Frida is having the time of her life and isn’t even concerned when she realizes she’s not all that aware of how many days she’s been here.

There are a couple of things that seem a bit off, however. For one thing, the crew of workers on the island (none of whom speak much English) all have the same snake tattoo. There’s also a housekeeper lady (María Elena Olivares) who appears to have an intense interest in Frida and persists in yelling “red rabbit” at her every time they cross paths, a phrase which means fuck-all to Frida.

At one point about a third of the way into the movie or so, Jess gets bitten by one of the snakes native to the island. Slater tells her the snakes are venomous, but the venom isn’t potent enough to kill you, and anyway, there aren’t any hospitals for hundreds of miles. Jess seems to recover from the snakebite, but later, she tells Frida that she thinks something bad is happening and wants to leave. Frida has no idea what she’s talking about and kinda gets on her case about screwing up the one chance she has to make something of her life by hobnobbing with the elite. Jess is hurt by this, but the friends eventually (sort of) make up. The next day, though, Jess is gone, and weirder still, no one else on the island seems to remember that she was even there at all.

After this incident, the horror begins to ramp up as it starts to become clearer about what exactly is going on in this purported island paradise.

Even though “vacation horror” isn’t my preferred subgenre, I had a lot of fun with this one; it took its time setting up the characters and situation, but that actually didn’t bother me at all, as all of the characters were interesting, and it sort of pulled you in, wondering what each person was hiding under his or her friendly surface. I also really enjoyed the slow reveal of the horror, and how everything seemed so innocuous at first until little niggling details began worming their way into the narrative.

Although the nature of the horror won’t be a particular shock to anyone who’s paying attention, the story also has something of a “twist” which I absolutely loved and did not see coming at all (even though I probably should have, in hindsight). The climax is violent and wonderfully visceral, and the ending was awesome and extremely satisfying in a sort of fucked up way.

If you like sunny vacation horror that is focused mainly on character building but goes balls to the wall revenge flick at the end, then Blink Twice will probably tickle your fancy, so check it out if it sounds like your thing. A great debut by Zoë Kravitz for sure; she’ll definitely be a director to watch in the future.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.