BLINK TWICE Review: The Gift? Of Laughter and Forgetting

The ritual of Catholic confession has never felt quite right to me; to each their own, but the idea that you can simply say some words that apparently mean you repent for some sins and that gets you into your idea of heaven, seems a little too convenient for those who commit acts that render apologies almost meaningless. I've no doubt some people do regret terrible things they've done, but I expect that a healthy number do not, and do not care who they hurt or how often, since it makes no different to their current existence or perceived future.

This might be a little too philosophical a beginning, but Blink Twice is more than just a thriller with a message. It's beautiful and sardonic, often cruel, never boring, perhaps slightly narrow in its focus, but nonetheless hits its idea home with both a bullet and a bludgeon. Director and co-writer Zoë Kravitz, in her debut, comes out of the gate smooth as silk, with mostly focused rage and a dollop of dark humour.

Frida (Naomi Ackie) is a somewhat directionless young woman, with an unexplained obsession with Slater King (Channing Tatum) a billionaire many times over in the tech business, who is trying to make a comeback after having to step out of the spotlight for unexplained reasons. A seeming chance encounter see the two have a meet-cute, and she and her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) are invited to Slater's private island, where no phones are allowed, the champagne never stops flowing, and the days blend together with endless sunshine, delicious meals, and the almost perfect man just out of reach.

But paradises don't exist, and Frida starts noticing anomalies: why there are clothes that fit her perfectly; how she can't remember how long they've been there or what exactly they do all day besides lounge by the pool and consume alcohol and drugs; why she sometimes wakes up with a perfectly clean dress but dirt under her fingernails and covering her feet. Then Jess is suddenly desperate to leave - Frida persuades her to stay, but the next morning it's like she was never there, and no one can remember her. What seems to be a bizarre science experiment is that, but for reasons that proverbial (and somewhat literally) turn the stomach.

Warning: spoilers ahead

It's tempting to think that Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Fiegenbaum are trying to make a point about the super-rich and their hangers-on; how such men can get away with drugging and raping women for days on end, constantly erasing their memories so they can perpetrate their crimes. These women - a former star of a survival-style show Sarah (Adria Arjona) and two others - came to this place voluntarily, and you want to yell at them for being so naive; but we're constantly told to be more trusting, that it's not all men. This could be any one of us accepting a ride home from a male friend, an invitation to a house party where we know people, even just going outside the bar for a smoke.

The island with its rich amenities is the pearl around the grain of sand that irritates - that sand is everywhere, just here in a better disguise. Perhaps it is better to forget our trauma, which can plague a mind and soul so constantly that we're never able to properly recover. But forgetting also lets people get away with these crimes, again and again. As the truth comes to Frida in flashes of recovered memory, at first she finds herself almost frozen with horror and humiliation.

Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra (The Last Black Man in San Francisco) shows us lives framed almost as the ideal instagram selfies of a lush life - until he doesn't and we're forced to reckon with what the eye has thus far been prevented from seeing. Editor Kathryn J. Schubert is frequently tasked with quick cuts that acts as the horrifying flashes that crack open Frida's memory. There are moments of levity, witty plays on words and the constant pull of just living this brief moment of hedonism because the truth is just too awful.

But remembered it must be. Ackie is all of us in a situation we're terrified to admit we too would likely find ourselves in, trapped and alone, both needing to remember and wishing we didn't have to.Solidarity with Sarah - the kind of female solidarity that feels honest - helps galvinize her. She holds strong as the centre of the story, and keeps us with her as she navigates the dangers - scared when it's impossible not to be, smart when the moment comes. Tatum plays that smarmy asshole type to a T (I'm guessing he knows men like this). He knows apologies can be more or less meaningless, and forgiveness is irrelevant to someone like him, who can always find a way to indulge their darkest desires with little or no consequence.

All of the actors - a great mix of personalities such as Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, Liz Carabel, Simon Rex, Trew Mullen, and Geena Davis as the only person who is happy to forget - keeps the energy and pacing moving at a steady pace, as Kravitz brings the hammer down.

Comparisons with The Glass Onion for its isolated location and skewering of the rich come to mind, as well as Ready or Not for the young woman fighting back. But a greater inspiration might have some from Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You, one of the best and most powerful television series of the past several years. It also confronts the violence and violation of having one's memory tampered with and how a survivor wants to move on, but it's also impossible to resist the temptation to repay that violence in kind.

While this might have a few too many beautiful people, and it perhaps cleans up too much in that movie logic way, it offers the kind of revenge catharsis the victims of sexual violence crave in a film, with an ending that skewers the typical of Hollywood or even indie films. Blink Twice is a strong debut from Kravitz and as delicious a rape revenge film as we've had in recent years.