Zo\u00eb Kravitz\u2019s passion for making movies is written all over Blink Twice<\/em><\/a>, Amazon MGM\u2019s new psychological thriller starring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum. You can see it in the feature\u2019s meticulously crafted shots and hear it in every carefully placed needle drop. Blink Twice <\/em>is a promising directorial debut from Kravitz \u2014 especially when the film is focused on enchanting you with its glamorous depiction of celebrity. But an impressive eye for the aesthetic can only do so much to carry a story that\u2019s as thorny and difficult as Blink Twice<\/em>\u2019s. And while many of the movie\u2019s core ideas about sex and power are potent, Blink Twice <\/em>struggles to explore them in a way that feels substantive or original.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Aside from the fact that she has an unusually good memory for faces, there doesn\u2019t seem to be that much out of the ordinary about cater waiter Frida (Naomi Ackie) as Blink Twice <\/em>opens the night before she and her roommate Jess (Alia Shawkawt) are meant to be working at a big gala. Under any other circumstance, spending an evening waiting hand and foot on boozed-up, uber-wealthy elites might sound like a nightmare to Frida, who dreams of being able to quit and pursue her passion for nail art. But with the big party being a celebration for embattled billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), Frida \u2014 one of many people smitten with the famous tech bro \u2014 can\u2019t help but get excited at the possibility of seeing him. And when their paths do eventually cross, it isn\u2019t long before he invites both women to his private island for a vacation getaway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Though there\u2019s a frenzied, rushed quality to Blink Twice<\/em>\u2019s opening act, Kravitz and cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra cleverly use that energy to establish the film as one that\u2019s trying to channel the disorienting experience of being pulled into a superstar\u2019s orbit. Everything about the champagne-soaked world of excess that King and his elite friends \/ employees (Simon Rex, Geena Davis, Haley Joel Osment, Christian Slater, Levon Hawke) exist in is strange to Frida and Jess. But the undeniable beauty of it all \u2014 the private jet, the island, the elaborate multicourse dinners chased with premium drugs \u2014 is enough to convince Don\u2019t Blink<\/em>\u2019s heroines that King has welcomed them to a wonderland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kravitz, who cowrote Don\u2019t Blink<\/em>\u2019s script with High Fidelity<\/em>\u2019s E.T. Feigenbaum, wants you to feel the fantasy, too, as Frida\u2019s days on the island start blending together into a dreamlike blur of lazy afternoons by the pool and drunken nights running under the stars. Because Don\u2019t Blink<\/em> takes so many cues from recent horrors like The Menu<\/em> and Ready or Not<\/em>, though, it\u2019s hard not to see the film\u2019s dark twists coming from a distance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Part of the problem is that few of Don\u2019t Blink<\/em>\u2019s characters have all that much texture to them aside from Tatum\u2019s King and Sarah (Adria Arjona), a former contestant on a Survivor<\/em>-like show who also shows up on the island looking to party. Aside from one important monologue that falls rather flat, Tatum does a serviceable job of embodying King as an eccentric, yet charming recluse laying low to rehabilitate his image after a very public scandal. And Arjona\u2019s Sarah \u2014 a professional celebrity famous for her ability to survive in stressful situations \u2014 is a surprise delight whose performance brings some much-needed levity to the film as things start to turn sinister.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But there is so little substance to Frida\u2019s personality outside of her infatuation with King that the character often feels two-dimensional save for a handful of moments when the movie abruptly shifts gears just long enough for her to point out (more for the audience\u2019s benefit) how weird being on the island feels. Those fleeting scenes give Ackie a chance to show off her range, and you can almost feel how much more unnerving Don\u2019t Blink <\/em>might be if the film showed us more of its heroine\u2019s complexity before she loses it to the island\u2019s strange magic. But for narrative reasons, Kravitz saves Frida\u2019s interiority for Don\u2019t Blink<\/em>\u2019s dizzying final act when the full picture of its mysterious puzzle comes into focus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To the film\u2019s credit, it\u2019s an exercise in horror storytelling that\u2019s actually trying to articulate several very specific things about gender and sexual violence rather than just coasting on unsettling vibes<\/a>. As Don\u2019t Blink <\/em>peels back the layers of its central mystery, it becomes exceedingly clear that Kravitz means for it to hit many of the same nerves as Emerald Fennell\u2019s Promising Young Woman<\/em> and Jordan Peele\u2019s Get Out. <\/em>But whereas those films\u2019 messages about power and trauma were more carefully woven into their narratives on a technical level, Blink Twice <\/em>hamfistedly spits its ideas out with a bravado that isn\u2019t entirely earned.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With a bit more polish and time spent making its players feel like actual people, Blink Twice<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>attempts to shock you with a heavily telegraphed pivot into metaphorical horror might work much more effectively. Instead, the film lands somewhere closer to Olivia Wilde\u2019s Don\u2019t Worry Darling<\/em>, which is to say stylish but somewhat lacking in its ability to unpack its central themes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Blink Twice <\/em>works fairly well on a surface level as a glitzy popcorn thriller that will make your skin crawl. But Kravitz is also clearly striving for more here \u2014 and the film never quite hits that deeper level of meaning that would turn it into something truly special.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n