Frida (Naomi Ackie) wants a better life. So, when she gets a gig working as a caterer at a gala hosted by the tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum), she comes up with a plan. Along with her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat), Frida changes into a gown and pretends to be one of the upscale event guests. After making a scene when she trips on her heel, she charms Slater and his group of friends. They party together over the course of the night, and then Slater offers a once-in-a-lifetime experience: Frida and Jess are invited with him and his posse on a trip to his private island. Frida jumps at the opportunity.
Is this island really a dream? Frida barrels ahead, ignoring the warning signs—no phones allowed—and focusing on the luxury. Frida, Jess, and the other women played by Trew Mullen, Liz Caribel, and Adria Arjona are offered the same white bikinis and white frocks to wear. They are given plentiful champagne and gourmet meals and have endless days relaxing by the pool. But as the days go by, key moments in the guest’s memories start to disappear, and it becomes extremely clear that everything is not what it seems.
Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice is her debut film about a party turned nightmare about the want of power, the abuse of power, and taking power back. The film features a captivating performance from Ackie as Frida, a complicated heroine who challenges victim narratives. Through striking visuals and an eerie tone, Kravitz plunges you into a world you won’t soon forget.
In celebration of Blink Twice, The Koalition spoke to Kravitz during the African American Film Critics Association roundtable to learn more about how she crafted the tone, the big reveal, many secrets of the island, and how her experiences as an actor shaped the movie.
The year was 2017, and Kravitz was acting in a film when she started coming up with what would ultimately become Blink Twice. The #MeToo movement had just begun, but notable predators like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein hadn’t yet been exposed. “Between things that I had seen, experienced, read, and things that have happened to friends of mine, I just felt like there was such a lack of conversation about the dynamics between men and women.
She enlisted her friend and now co-writer, E.T. Feigenbaum, to help her develop the screenplay. “I had written basically the basic story, and I sent him this idea. We started to write together, and the process took so long that by the time High Fidelity came along, we had already been writing the script for a year already. We learned so much in terms of being in a writer’s room and having to learn about theme and character arc in a way that both of us didn’t really know. There’s a reason this took five years to write. It’s a really complicated story with a very complicated tone. We also had to keep on adjusting the characters and their dynamics based off of the cultural conversation that kept changing.”
“I wanted to see a group of women that we judged, and then we wanted to see them become full characters and see them kind of emerge into their power.” She also reconsidered the male characters in light of the shifts in perception she was witnessing. Slater’s crew of guys couldn’t be boorish bros; they had to seem like they were “hyper aware” and concerned with being seen as woke in the public eye.
Slater became a tech billionaire, a profession that would make him feel like his generation’s rock star. “That was also something that people would relate to and like to see. He was a kid and got billions of dollars and made a mistake, and now he just wants to be one with nature on his island and hang out with his friends. It was really about creating a safe environment so that we could lure Frida and the audience into this world.”
Frida also evolved over time into the character we now see. “She wants to be respected; she wants to not be invisible. So, what will she do to get that? It’s something that we can all relate to. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be accepted and looked at, to not be ignored, and to have champagne poured for you and not be the one pouring champagne. It created a character who is strong; she knows what she wants, and she’s willing to do a lot to get it. That want is what pushes the story forward.”
Kravitz, who has earned critical acclaim for her work in The Batman and High Fidelity, has always been interested in directing and extending involvement in the film world beyond just acting. “I think what I realized was that while I worked as hard as I could and always wanted to do the best job I could, I just really loved movies as a whole. Acting was the way I knew I could contribute.”
Once she got deeper into the writing process of Blink Twice, she found it hard to let go. The idea of handing it off to a different director became unthinkable. “I think I just got a little scared to pass this off to someone else. I don’t know if they are seeing what I’m seeing. I’ve gone through this incredible magical journey of starting something with a feeling, and that feeling starts to infect your dreams, your thoughts, and the way you see things. And then you get to birth that into reality… It’s such an incredible journey to go on.”
“I don’t really have anything to compare directing to because when you start to see things in your mind, you have all these decisions to make and then don’t know what it is you’re doing as a whole until it’s completely done. That’s part is so scary about directing. It’s decision after decision, and you hope they meld together. It’s like inviting people to a dinner party and hoping these two people get along. I hope they like each other, I hope the chicken’s right, and I hope they know this person is sober. ‘Do they have what they need?’ You’re just going with the flow and hoping that it all melds together, especially when telling a story that’s so complicated like this. It’s a really interesting process. At the end of the process, you see a reflection of who you are and who you are creatively. It’s for better or for worse. You have to look at yourself.”
While Frida is the protagonist of the story, the first character that was cast was Slater King. Kravitz immediately wanted Channing Tatum. At the time she didn’t know him, but she wanted to see him do something unlike anything he had ever done before and thought he would be a perfect match for Slater. His naturally good-natured demeanor would lure the audience—and Frida—onto this island.
Kravitz was looking for someone who was charming and who would make the audience feel safe. “Who else is that but Channing Tatum?” she says. “The whole world would be like, yes, I would go on vacation with you and feel totally safe. There’s nothing creepy about him.” Kravitz also had a feeling that Tatum himself was a feminist thanks to his work on the Magic Mike movies, which are geared toward female audiences. That meant he would be both a good presence on set and his persona as Slater would be something of a subversion. Slater offered up a new challenge for Tatum in that he would have to inhabit a person who was nothing like him.
Finding her Frida was a whole other journey for Kravitz. “She’s many things at once. You never really get a real handle on who she is. How manipulative is she? How unaware? Is she the villain? Is she the victim? There’s so many different elements to that character.” She knew she wanted a Black actress because she was writing from her own perspective, and after a few conversations, casting director Carmen Cuba offered up an option: Naomi Ackie. “I was like what a beast; also, her face is so cinematic.”
“The story is told through Frida’s eyes, and I didn’t want to shoot things in the standard way. I wanted to shoot things in the way that Frida was experiencing things, and I also wanted to shoot things in a way that felt like a memory. That’s why the shots are so strange in some ways or so close. That’s why the sounds aren’t really practical. When you remember things, you don’t remember what you felt, what stood out, and what felt important to you at the time. Therefore, my Director of Photography and I really wanted to find ways to immerse the audience into Frida’s experience.”
During the creative process between Kravitz and Ackie, the pursuit of power and sexual assault were the main topics of discussion, but also about Frida’s want for something more. Frida’s relationship with the symbol of power that is Slater, how that affects her, and that gives her blind spots to certain things. There are many different moments involving how people interact with each other, and when it comes to these ideas of status and money, they’re all abusing it in one way or another. Frida is an interesting, imperfect character, and that makes her a fascinating victim. One whose desires force the audience to empathize with her in a different way than they normally would.
“Power is really the core of what Blink Twice is about. I’ve been calling power an entity, and it’s such an interesting entity that’s so complicated. We all want power, but it is oppressive by nature, and in order to be on top, someone has to be on the bottom. The fact it’s something we’re all striving for is very complex, and I really wanted to explore specifically within female characters. When we talk about women, we often talk about empowerment, and when we talk about men, we talk about power. I really wanted to explore a female character that wants power. She doesn’t want to be empowered; she wants power. She doesn’t want to be with Slater King; she wants to be Slater King, and I really wanted to explore what that looks like. Often times women are meant to feel like we’re asking for too much, and that was really the throughline for Frida and what she wants.”
Blink Twice was born mostly out of disbelief that no one else had done it yet. Harvey Weinstein was exposed. The public reckoning had begun. By 2020, Jeffrey Epstein had been exposed—she had not known anything about him beforehand. But she knew this evil existed in the world and was horrified and thus inspired to keep going. Blink Twice isn’t about anyone in particular; it is about people. Women are being told to smile every day, all the time. They are expected to “forget” moments of discomfort, terror, and abuse and to keep pretending they are having a good time. They are expected to play the game.
As a true lover and fan of cinema, it was important to me to make this story honest and entertaining at the same time. I wanted to make a film that I wanted to see. Let’s explore these moments of discomfort; not seriously, let’s…hang out here for a minute—’cuz shit this is wild and is worth looking at. Humans are so complex, and fucked up, and funny, and beautiful and brutal. We all want power—social, cultural, financial, and political. The question is: what will we do to get it? How do you play the game? This is not a story about empowerment. This is a story about power. Period.
“I wanted to invite the audience on this journey of an immersive sensor experience that whisks you away, so by the time Frida says, ‘What day is it?’ You realize, ‘Oh my God, what day is it? What is going on? How many bottles of champagne have we drunk? How many drugs have we taken? What’s been going? What’s been going on?’ I was trying to find ways to lure the audience into this state, and I found repetition to be really helpful when it came to getting used to things and having it happen over and over again. It feels like a stylistic choice, but then you actually realize this is time passing. I wanted the audience to have the experience of Frida, so when you all of a sudden realize what’s going on, we need to get the fuck out of here. You’re not separate from the characters. In that moment, you’re with them, and you go along for the rest of the journey with those characters.”
When it came time to market Blink Twice to the masses, it was important to Kravitz that the real plot and messaging behind the movie were not revealed in its trailers. It was a delicate balance between keeping the movie intriguing without telling everything. “I think marketing is very interesting. You have to give the people enough information that they’re interested, and you have to keep enough a secret to protect the experience when they go see the film. I do think what was most important was to know this is about a woman who gets taken out of her element, goes to a place with people she doesn’t know, is in danger, and has to leave. I actually wanted to really keep the fact that it was about memory a secret. Then once we realized we have to give that information away to give the audience enough information, I actually realized that wasn’t the secret of the film; that’s the setup of the film.”
“It was a really interesting process for me as the filmmaker because you can be so protective of the secret.’ This is the secret, and no one can know that Jess is going to go missing and all this stuff is going to happen,’ and then I realized, ‘Oh no, this is all the setup, and the core of the movie is really what happens after they realize what’s going on.’ It was a process, and it was really hard for me because I wanted everything to be a secret. It’s funny that people see the trailer and they say, ‘You’re giving away everything,’ but we actually didn’t.”
To accurately create the feeling of a mysterious private island in an unidentified part of the world, Kravitz and the design team had to find the perfect spot to film on location. They found what they were looking for in Yucatán, Mexico, a hotel where the cast both lived and shot during production. Kravitz wanted Slater’s hideaway to feel unlike what we typically associate with tech billionaires, meaning she wanted to stray away from the sleek and futuristic. Slater, she envisioned, is trying to go backwards instead of forwards and reconnect with something older that he thinks of as more earthy. But the setting also added another layer of thematic tension Kravitz found interesting. “I liked this backdrop of colonialism,” she says. “And that oppression and what we do to each other and the violence that’s taken place there.” While the haciendas they surveyed for the shoot were beautiful, Kravitz also says there’s a “heavy energy to those places.”
“The concept of the island was really because I wanted to isolate the characters, so they had to deal with the themes of the film. I was really inspired by Lord of the Flies and the Garden of Eden. I’m trying to create this place of illusion and safety and subvert the audience’s expectations of what is safe. Usually in horror or thriller films you make everything dark and scary, but I really wanted the horror or the thrill of this film to be emotional; I wanted to make it clear we’re not relying on just it’s dark and it’s scary or has jump scares. We’re really taking the audience on an emotional journey, and tonally, it’s been really interesting. A lot of people seem to think the tone switches and it becomes more comedic later on, but once Frida and Sarah understand what’s going on, it’s not that the tone changes; it’s that the audience’s and the character’s perspective changes. What’s horrifying is that everything else stays the same. I wanted to highlight what happens when now we know we’re in danger and everyone’s still hanging out by the pool, everyone is still having dinner, and the music is still playing. To me, the horror of the situation is that these women are in.”
[“Finding balance with the reveal] was a very hard thing to do because a lot of stuff had to get cut, and it was stuff I realized when I was editing because, especially with a film like this, you can’t unknow what you know. All of these things are so fascinating because I know what’s going on, and then I realized after showing it to people, ‘Oh well, if you have no idea what’s going on, the scene is not engaging. It’s not as complicated as I thought it was.’ It was trying to find out when to leave a breadcrumbs and to create this thread of tension. You have to keep taught, and if it gets lost, you lose them, and if you break too early, you haven’t earned it yet. That was one of the most difficult things to know when to reveal. There are moments when the audience and the characters are on the same page. There are moments where the audience is ahead of the characters, and there’s a moment where the character is no more than the audience and has to find that balance and when to do that.”
“I’m someone that really loves film, so my focus was always about the audience’s experience. I was constantly keeping that in mind because there are filmmakers who don’t care about what the audience is feeling. Maybe that’s part of also being a woman; we’re so conscious of everyone else’s experience. It also might have been part of the intuition that went into that process.”
“A lot of people can watch this movie and say, ‘She shouldn’t have gone on the island in the first place.’ Which is in my mind the equivalent of, ‘She was wearing a short skirt; she was asking for it from you.’ Why would she not want more? We are conditioned from birth to want, and we’re told if you work hard enough, you can get it. That’s very complicated. I really wanted to efficiently show the audience she could have this, so obviously she’s going to go for this. [I wanted to capture the feeling] of [feeling like] dirt or the metaphor of dirt. I wanted this beautiful, pristine world, but the dirt, the truth, and the trauma are always coming up; it’s always boiling up and you can’t escape; nothing stays pristine. These white dresses are covered in blood and dirt by the end of the film. In reality, life is messy, and I wanted to show that visually.”
When the script got into Tatum’s hands, he found it both “exciting” and “terrifying.” Slater offered up a new challenge for him in that he would have to inhabit a person who was nothing like him. There’s nothing really to love about Slater. He’s a full psychopath. But Tatum was also intrigued by the possibility of doing something daring, and in Kravitz he found an eager collaborator in challenging himself. They would discuss different versions of Slate and agreed upon that we didn’t want to do the very stereotypical movie moment in a thriller where you reveal the bad guy.
“Channing is part of the reason we were able to make this film and go to such extreme places. We have so much trust, and we know things about each other; we have short hands. I know things about his life; he knows things about mine, and I’m really pushing him to tap into that. I knew what he could do, and he trusted that I was leading him to a place that was engaging, brave, and truthful. It was scary. I think that was a scary scene for him to shoot, and the fact that he trusted me to push him past the point of maybe where it felt comfortable was the beautiful gift he gives in that scene. I’m really proud of what he’s done in this film, and I’m really thankful he trusted me to push him to go there.”
Blink Twice is haunted by erasure and the collective act of forgetting, but Zavitz doesn’t “want to forget a moment of making this movie. I don’t want to forget how it was a really hard movie to make for so many reasons because of time, location, subject matter, tone, and the fact I’ve never done it before. It was really, really difficult. I haven’t had a child, but a lot of my girlfriends who have had children talk about it being the most painful thing they’ve ever experienced, and then they think back on it, and they just think about how beautiful it is. They forget the pain they had to go through, and I’ve always thought that so incredible that women are able to do that, but I don’t necessarily want to forget how difficult it was. I cried myself to sleep a lot, and I didn’t sleep a lot. I was constantly questioning myself and wondering if I was making the right choices or if this movie was something that should be made. I appreciate the difficulties that I had and the entire cast and crew had to go through to make the film.”
“I’ve learned that I can do it. I feel, especially as a woman, as the daughter of famous people, as an actress that’s not a director, you think and you feel, ‘I can do this. I know how to tell a story, and I think I have things to say that are worth taking up some space.’ It’s a scary thing to admit, and there are often times where you feel like you know the whole world is sitting there waiting to see you fail. I had to really shut those voices down in my mind that were telling me, ‘You’re not good enough; you can’t do this, and no one wants this. They’re all going to laugh at you or cancel you or destroy you or whatever it is.’ I had to really keep myself centered and stay connected to my creativity to come out the other side and go, ‘Yeah, you were chasing something, and you were listening to whatever was driving you to tell that story. You know having this experience of seeing so many people respond to the film and feel seen by the film.’ I feel incredibly validated in the journey of getting here.”
Blink Twice is now available on Prime Video. To learn more about Kravitz’s creative process, check out the full interview in the video above.
