Blink Twice Review

Channing Tatum sure is having himself a fine little 2024, isn’t he?

The guy has had three movies come out this year, and he had no less than a tertiary role in any of them. The least of them, Deadpool & Wolverine, saw him finally get his hands on a dream role he had spent years pushing for. Oh, and it led to his becoming a meme! Always a good thing. But yeah, that was the flick he was in the least, and he was still anything but insubstantial in it.

Besides that, he’s had two vehicles where he co-lead. Fly Me To The Moon, with Scarlett Johansson, and the topic du jour here, Blink Twice. I want to be able to say more about the former, but I unfortunately missed it when it was in theaters. It appeared to be a cute little romcom about an emergency backup crew set to stage the moon landing in case the real event did not go well. That’s… all I know. Or even just think I know. I could be way off on what it was about.

Oh, all this and he remains engaged to Zoe Kravitz, as well, so he is just winning all over.

In Blink Twice, Tatum is playing the co-lead of Slater King to Naomi Ackie’s Frida. His role is that of a reclusive billionaire who has somewhat recently been embroiled in a controversy. After laying low for a year, King re-emerged for an apology tour where he notes that, during the missing time off, he purchased an island and started therapy to get his personal issues under control.

Frida and her friend Jess work as servers at a very exclusive, upper-crust establishment where King is hosting a dinner or celebration of some sort. And Frida is enthralled by King, watching TikToks of him on her phone and direly wanting to get closer to him at the benefit gala shebang.

She does just that when she and Jess ditch their server outfits for dresses and sneak into the affair. Frida breaks her heel and trips, leading to King helping her up and taking notice of her. He invites Frida and Jess to spend the rest of the night partying with him and his guests. As the night winds down and they have to leave, Slater invites the starstruck gals to come continue the festivities on his island. They unflinchingly say yes.

This is all the opening twenty minutes or so, and going further into the story would necessitate getting into spoiler territory, but Frida and Jess lose themselves in the debauchery of the island, and after a few days, a mystery emerges around their stay…

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Director Zoe Kravitz is a wunderkind, and Blink Twice makes full use of her talents. The shots, the framing, the takes… it’s all excellently handled. She really has a grip on directing a major motion picture, and it’s wild to consider that this is her debut attempt. If this is what we can expect from her, she has an exceptional future ahead of her behind the camera as well as in front of it.

One of the most noticeable aspects of Blink Twice is the usage of sound and the editing to keep those sounds prominent and at the forefront of the audience’s mind. I could see it argued that Kravitz’ use of sound gets potentially a bit heavy-handed, but to me, I enjoyed the focus being paid to it. I look forward to rewatching this one someday with headphones on.

But whether it’s the audio or the camerawork, Kravitz nails every aspect of her duties here.

+ Naomi Ackie is an incredibly strong lead in the film, and she adds the presence to every scene that they all desperately need. Her Frida runs a gamut of emotions from defiant to proud to starstruck to vengeful to terrified and so on. Ackie is a stand-out at whatever the story demands of her.

Ackie completely holds her own opposite Tatum in all of their scenes together. She doesn’t have nearly the filmography of her co-star, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that from watching her performance here.

– Blink Twice is up there with Us in that it is a movie I heavily enjoyed, but after the fact, it leads to a lot of thinking… whereupon the plot details fall apart to a certain degree. Things aren’t as dire in that regard here–as much as I loved Us, the plot was utter nonsense if you put five minutes of thought into it–but they still start feeling certainly questionable.

Oh, how I love Downs I can’t really get all that into because they would be huge spoilers to elucidate upon. But suffice it to say that aspects of Blink Twice’s plot don’t stand up to heavy scrutiny.

– Speaking of Downs that I can not get heavily into because of spoilers: the last scene of the movie! It really left me searching myself to consider how I felt about it. It definitely gave me a little bit of a squiggie feeling. But I can’t get into it. Let’s just say that the final scene is supposed to leave the viewer with one feeling, but I came out of it with another entirely. So I’m not sure it’s very successful.

8.0

The final score: review Very Good

The 411

Blink Twice has edged itself into my top five on the year so far to this point, and we are down to only four months left, so that's a pretty good position to have. Granted, I've been saying 2024 has been a weaker year for film at the top, but don't let that detract from this one. The direction and technical aspects are impeccable for Kravitz, and the mood and tension are fantastic; this is a very well-made movie across the board and into the actors' performances. It's one of the few movies with a good third act this year, too (despite my misgivings of the very, very end); for whatever reason movies have really struggled to close out their efforts in 2024. Not here, though.