Blink Twice

Produced byStarringCinematographyAdam Newport-BerraEdited byKathryn J. SchubertMusic byChanda DancyDistributed by102 minutes^[1]CountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBudget$20 million^[2]Box office$16.7 million^[3][4]

Blink Twice is a 2024 American black comedy psychological thriller^[5] film directed by Zoë Kravitz, in her directorial debut, from a script she wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum. The film stars Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan, Geena Davis, and Alia Shawkat.

Blink Twice premiered at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on August 8, 2024, and was released in the United States on August 23 by Amazon MGM Studios through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film has grossed over $16 million worldwide on a $20 million production budget, and received generally positive reviews from critics.

Animal-themed nail artist and cocktail waitress Frida works an exclusive event with her friend Jess. Frida encounters billionaire tech mogul, Slater King, who recently stepped down as CEO amid a public apology for past behavior. He invites her and Jess to join him on his private island. There, Slater's assistant Stacy confiscates their phones. In attendance are Slater's friends and business partners, photographer Vic, private chef Cody, DJ Tom, and graduate Lucas, as well as three female guests; Sarah, Camilla, and Heather. The women are treated with lavish rooms, gift bags of perfume, and a holiday experience, enhanced by high-end meals and cocktails prepared by Cody, and potent hallucinogenic drugs supplied by Vic.

Frida clashes with Sarah over Slater's attention while Jess notices lapses in her memory. Frida notices that the local workers all sport the same snake tattoo, and she has strange encounters with a maid, who seems to recognize her and calls her "Red Rabbit".

Rich, Slater's therapist, visits and receives a gift in a red bag. During a night of partying and drugs, Jess is bitten by a snake and later confesses to Frida she wants to leave. At breakfast, Frida notices that Lucas smells like the perfume the women are given. While the men are away fishing, Frida discovers a room with dozens of identical red gift bags. She is then tricked into drinking the snake's venom by the maid and begins remembering strange events. She realizes that Jess is missing, although the rest of the women do not remember Jess at all. Alarmed, Frida investigates and learns a flower indigenous to the island capable of wiping memories has been inside the food and perfume gifted to them. Frida convinces Sarah of what is happening and gets her to drink the venom, an antidote to the flower's effects.

The men return as Frida and Sarah grow more paranoid. The pair trick the other women, including Stacy, into drinking shots of the venom to restore their memories. Frida sneaks into Slater's office to retrieve their phones, only to find they are out of power and service. Her full memories return, revealing the men have been sexually assaulting the women and then wiping their memories using the flower. When Jess's memories could not be wiped due to the venom, they killed her. She also discovers polaroids featuring different women and men with red gift bags, revealing that King is inviting guests to rape people regularly and gifting them perfume to use when they are away from the island.

Frida and Sarah attempt to buy time for themselves as Camilla and Heather's memories return, leading Camilla to stab Tom to death while Heather badly injures Vic before being shot dead by Stan, Slater's security guard who was a Marine. Slater kills Camilla and the men take refuge in Slater's villa where Slater mocks Lucas for choosing to be inactively complicit in the abuse by doing nothing to help the women. Stacy attacks Frida, preferring to be ignorant of the men’s behavior before Frida stabs her to death. Stan follows Frida but is bludgeoned to death by Sarah with a rock, who takes his gun; Cody makes his way to the woods but is presumably killed by Sarah. In the villa, Lucas tries to run away but due to a trap set for Slater by Frida and Sara, is mistakenly shot in the head; following this, Slater traps Frida in the villa.

It is revealed that Frida was invited to the island a year prior and experienced the same events, biting off Vic's pinky finger and scarring her head when she fell against a rock before her memories were wiped. The maid had recognized Frida from her fingernails painted with red rabbits. Slater laughs off his recent apology and states that forgetting is better than forgiveness, before leaving to retrieve Sarah. While Slater is gone, Frida laces his vape with the memory-erasing perfume. The effects make him forget the previous events and cause him to panic upon seeing the bodies. Slater slips and knocks himself unconscious as the villa catches fire. The two women escape, leaving Vic to die but Frida saves Slater.

Sometime later, Rich, who also assaulted Frida on the island, encounters Slater who is noticeably more disoriented. It is revealed that Frida has now married Slater and assumed his position as CEO, all while drugging his vape with the flower to keep him compliant. As the event's guests congratulate Frida, Rich is apprehended.

Zoë Kravitz started writing Blink Twice under the working title Pussy Island in 2017.^[6][7] In June 2021, Kravitz announced that she would make her directorial debut with the film from a script co-written with E.T. Feigenbaum. Channing Tatum signed on to star and, at the Cannes Film Market, MGM won the distribution rights as Naomi Ackie was cast as Frida, the film's lead role.^[8][9] The rest of the cast was announced from May to June 2022, with Jordan Harkins and Stacy Perskie joining the film as executive producers.^[10]

Filming began on June 23, 2022,^[11] with production occurring in Yucatán and Quintana Roo, Mexico.^[12] In January 2024, the film's title was changed from Pussy Island to Blink Twice;^[13] Kravitz explained that issues formed with the Motion Picture Association (MPA) "not wanting to put it on a poster, or a billboard, or a kiosk; movie theaters not wanting to put it on a ticket" but also mentioned, "Interestingly enough, after researching it, women were offended by the word, and women seeing the title were saying, 'I don't want to see that movie,' which is part of the reason I wanted to try and use the word, which is trying to reclaim the word, and not make it something that we're so uncomfortable using. But we're not there yet. And I think that's something I have the responsibility as a filmmaker to listen to."^[14]

Blink Twice premiered at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on August 8, 2024 and it was released in the United States by Amazon MGM Studios on August 23, 2024,^[7] with Warner Bros. Pictures releasing the film internationally on August 21, 2024.^[15] On August 21, Amazon issued a trigger warning for the film on Twitter for "mature themes and depictions of violence — including sexual violence", which Variety noted was rare for a studio to do but part of a growing trend in Hollywood beyond MPA ratings.^[16] The warning was also attached before theatrical screenings.^[17]

As of August 28, 2024^[update], Blink Twice has grossed $10 million in the United States and Canada, and $6.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $16.7 million.^[3][4]

In the United States and Canada, Blink Twice was released alongside The Crow and The Forge, and was projected to gross $7–8 million from 3,067 theaters in its opening weekend.^[18] The film made $2.9 million on its first day, including an estimated $820,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $7.3 million, finishing fourth at the box office.^[19][20]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 74% of 182 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "A bold and memorable debut that thrusts Zoë Kravitz into the turf of directors to watch, Blink Twice is a live wire of a film."^[21] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 66 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[22] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave the film an overall positive score of 74% (including an average of 3 out of 5 stars), with 50% saying they would definitely recommend it.^[19]

• Blink Twice at IMDb