BLINK TWICE : Tuesday 27th August 2024

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'BLINK TWICE' earlier this week, and this American psychological thriller film is Co-Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Zoe Kravitz in her Directorial debut. The film was released last week too in the US, has so far grossed US$17M from a production budget of US$20M and has generated largely positive critical reviews. 

Here animal-themed nail artist and casual cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) works an exclusive fund raising gala event with her best friend Jess (Alia Shawcat). Frida encounters billionaire tech mogul, Slater King (Channing Tatum), who is hosting the event and who recently stepped down as CEO amid a very public apology for his past behaviour toward his employees. After their shift has finished, the pair put on their glad rags and crash the after party, where ultimately Slater invites her and Jess to join him on his private island. And so Slater and his entourage fly off to the island on his private jet.

There, Slater's assistant Stacy (Geena Davis) confiscates their phones. In attendance are Slater's friends and business associates, photographer Vic (Christian Slater), private chef Cody (Simon Rex), DJ Tom (Haley Joel-Osment), and graduate Lucas (Levon Hawke), as well as three female guests - Sarah (Adria Arjona), Camilla (Liz Caribel), and Heather (Trew Mullen). The women are treated with lavish rooms, gift bags of perfume, and a high end holiday experience, enhanced by gourmet meals, cocktails and fine wines prepared by Cody, and potent hallucinogenic drugs supplied by Vic.

Frida clashes with Sarah for Slater's attention while Jess observes lapses in her memory. Frida notices that the local workers all sport the same snake tattoo on their arm, and she has strange encounters with an older maid who doesn't speak English, yet appears to recognise her and calls her 'Red Rabbit'. Later, Rich (Kyle MacLachlan), Slater's therapist, visits and receives a gift in a red bag. During a night of partying and drugs, Jess is bitten by a non-venomous 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 on a fishing trip, Frida discovers a room with dozens of identical red gift bags all lined up neatly around the room on rows of shelves. She is then tricked into drinking the snake's venom from a bottle by the maid and shortly thereafter begins to remember strange events. She realises that Jess is missing, although the rest of the women do not. 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 too, an antidote to the flower's effects.

The men return from their fishing trip later that afternoon, as Frida and Sarah grow increasingly agitated and concerned for their ongoing safety. The pair trick the other women, including Stacy, into drinking tequila shots laced with 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 out of service range. 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 in her system from the earlier snake bite, they killed her. She also discovers polaroids featuring different women and men with red gift bags, revealing that Slater is inviting guests to rape people regularly and gifting them perfume to use when they are away from the island.

Frida and Sarah try to buy themselves time with varying degrees of success as Camilla and Heather's memories return, leading Camilla to stab Tom to death while Heather badly injures Vic by repeatedly slamming a marble chess board into his head, before being shot dead by Stan (Cris Costa), Slater's former US Marine security guard. Slater kills Camilla and the men take refuge in Slater's villa where Slater chastises Lucas for opting 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 behaviour before Frida stabs her to death. Frida runs into the woods behind the villa and is chased by Stan who catches up with her and holds her at gunpoint, but is then bludgeoned to death from behind by Sarah with a rock, who takes his gun. Cody makes his way to the woods but is shot dead by Sarah. In the villa, Lucas tries to run away but due to a trap set for Slater by Frida and Sarah, is mistakenly shot in the head. Following this, Slater traps Frida in the villa and binds her hands and gags her mouth. 

It is revealed that Frida was invited to the island the year before and experienced the same events, biting off Vic's little finger and scarring her temple when she fell against a rock before her memories were wiped. The maid had recognised Frida from her fingernails painted with red rabbits. Slater laughs off his recent apology in the media and exclaims that forgetting is better than forgiveness, before leaving to retrieve Sarah. While Slater is gone, Frida cuts through her hand bindings with a shard of broken glass, and laces his vape with the memory-erasing perfume. When Slater returns with Sarah he holds a kitchen knife to her throat, but the effects make him forget the previous events, back away from Sarah and cause him to panic upon seeing the dead and mutilated bodies strewn across the floor. 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 at a similar gala dinner as to the one that opened the film, Rich, who also assaulted Frida on the island, encounters Slater who is noticeably incoherent. It is revealed that Frida has married Slater and assumed his position as CEO, all the while drugging his vape with the flower to keep him compliant. As the event's guests congratulate Frida, Rich is apprehended by law enforcement officers.

For Zoe Kravitz Directorial debut, she has hit on a winner here proving her filmmaking talents both in front and behind the camera, leaving this Reviewer keen to see what she turns her mind to next. Here she ably ramps up the tension, leverages the suspense, throws in the occasional laugh before serving up a blood soaked ending with nods to 'The Menu' and 'Get Out' especially. Channing Tatum is right on form here as the disgraced CEO tech tycoon, and Naomi Ackie and Adria Arjona add weight and credibility through their performances too. A well crafted film, with on point sound design, a cracking soundtrack and a stacked cast of A-list talent, this film is worth searching out for the underlying messages it seeks to impart, the visual spectacle and its power to keep you talking after the credits have rolled.

'Blink Twice' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

GREEN ROOM : Tuesday 17th May 2016.

'GREEN ROOM' which I saw in the week is Written and Directed by Jeremy Saulnier, and so far this low budget limited release horror thriller has garnered much critical acclaim which has yet to transfer to big Box Office receipts, but nonetheless is worthy of your attention. With it's worldwide Premier at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival - one year ago now - and a limited release in the US in mid-April this year, the film arrived on Aussie shores mid this month and so far has generated US$2.8M from its budget outlay of US$5M. You'll have to hunt this film down though if you are tempted to see this well crafted and original film, because it is at selected cinemas only, and I had to traipse half way across Sydney to catch it . . . but it was worth the journey. The film has picked up six award wins and three other nominations from across the circuit too.

The story here concerns the members of a young punk band 'The Ain't Rights' - Pat, Sam, Reece and Tiger (Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawcat, Joe Cole and Callum Turner respectively) who are wrapping up a largely unsuccessful tour with a view that after their last gig they are all going to go their separate ways. We join them in the American Pacific Northwest travelling to the  Oregon coast to perform a gig which subsequently nets them about $6 each for their performance. None too pleased they take their anger and frustration out on Tad (David W. Thompson), a young radio host who coordinated the gig for them. Determined to set things right Tad organises another gig for them at a club just outside of Portland, tucked away in the murky forest backwater along the last chance highway and past the no-hope turn-off to shitville. He tells them that the gig will pay them $350. They climb into their truck which is their home away from home on wheels and contains instruments, bedding, clothing and their worldly possessions it seems, and head off for the gig later that afternoon. They are told that the audience will be boots and braces types - skinheads - but just to play whatever they choose. They open up with a cover of the Dead Kennedy's 'Nazi Punk's Fuck Off' which enrages the gathered audience but who are won over by the originality of the subsequent songs.

After the gig, the band pack up their gear and make a hasty retreat from their Neo Nazi confines, but Sam forgets she left her phone to recharge in the Green Room, and so Pat goes back to collect it. Barging into the Green Room he observes Amber (Imogen Poots) and Werm (Brent Werzner) standing over the body of a dead girl, with a knife protruding from her skull. Quickly the four band members are hurriedly locked into the Green Room with Amber and the corpse, by Gabe and Big Justin. Game (Macon Blair) leaves to call his boss and the owner of the club Darcy Banker (Patrick Stewart), leaving an armed Big Justin (Eric Edelstein) to keep the four friends and Amber at bay. They over power him however, and now the captor is held captive at gunpoint by the five. When Darcy arrives he attempts to calm the situation through the closed heavily locked door of the Green Room by lulling the five into a false sense of security, telling them the police have been called and the situation diffused, but he is concerned about the unregistered gun that Reece now holds, and for that reason they should give it up.

What follows is a game of wits as the four band members are fearful for their lives whilst Amber is the gung-ho nothing to lose one amongst them determined to make right by her dead friend laying on the floor in the same room. Darcy does his best to negotiate his way into the room and out of this mess, intent on eliminating the witnesses at the hands of his white supremacist Neo Nazi red laced skinhead followers. Whilst the gang inside the Green Room are held captive it all gets heated as tempers become more and more frayed, and Big Justin is held in an arm lock with a gun pointed at his head for good measure. The gang discover a bunker immediately below the floorboards as night begins to fall, and the venue has been cleared under the auspices of a power outage, so leaving Darcy and his henchmen to go about their business of dispensing with the five witnesses.

An attempt to negotiate and the five to be let loose from their confines goes horribly wrong when Pat tries to hand over the offending weapon to Darcy on the other side of the door.  The result is that his outstretched arm is savagely attacked and mutilated with knives and machetes. Just about recovering the situation within the Green Room, Amber takes a box cutter blade to Big Justin's stomach very effectively seeing him off in one swift slice.

The five eventually make it out of the Green Room and into the darkened deserted club, only to be greeted by pit bull dogs who quickly dispense with two of the band members whilst gun fire dispenses with another. This leaves Pat, Sam and Amber to get the hell outta Dodge with their lives still intact and their bodies in one piece, but Darcy is still hell bent on covering those tracks with a crime scene in the forest that makes the whole cause and effect look very different. With his arm now wrapped in gaffer tape the three remaining attempt to escape once again with further gun shots, pit bull attacks and bloody swipes of a machete resulting in Sam buying the farm, but not before two of Darcy's henchmen have succumbed too at the hands of Amber and Pat.

With only Amber and Pat remaining a face off occurs in the bunker discovered below the Green Room which was accessed by a hole ripped in the floor boards. Armed only with the hand gun and a box cutter which Amber has already proven herself with, two other young red laced henchmen have been ordered to kill on sight, while Gabe cleans up the evidence of the dead bodies in the club. Pat and Amber overcome the two killing them, and seize Gabe when he inadvertently returns to the Green Room to clean up in there not knowing what has just gone down. He says that he just wants to go back to prison, and intends to give himself up to the Police. They lead him out of the club at gun point as dawn breaks outside and all is calm, but not yet over.

They walk through the forest and hear gun shots in the distance - the two send Gabe off to alert the Police which he willingly agrees to do. They come across Darcy and two of his men with the bands truck and the corpses of the other band members being made to look like they were attacked and killed by wild dogs. Needless to say it doesn't end well for Darcy and Co. at the hands of Pat and Amber who are determined to see that justice is duly served.

This is a well crafted, original story that is thrilling, horrific, tense and at times even funny. It is well cast with believable performances not the least of which is Patrick Stewart as the level headed but deviously sinister gentleman club owner hiding some very dark secrets and who will stop at nothing to protect his interests. But, what he and his kind did not count on was four young punks and a girl witness with a particular set of skills who will not go silently into the night, and in this respect both Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots hold their own too and give equally strong grounded performances. Taught, twisted, riveting, and riotous - this will not be for everyone, but for those who are looking for something fresh, genre defining, life or death, intense and emotional, then you can't go far wrong with this one.


-Steve, at Odeon Online-