Naomi Ackie plays a waitress who is invited to a tech billionaire's private island, where the party never ends. What's the catch?

By Owen Gleiberman

“Blink Twice” opens with a blurry close-up of a frog, then shimmers into view. The sound is eerie; the image is sinister, mesmerizing, mysterious, trippy. That describes the film, too. The first feature directed by Zoë Kravitz and co-written by E.T. Feigenbaum, “Blink Twice” is a post-#MeToo feminist party-girl nightmare thriller made with an unusual sense of intimacy. Kravitz, the veteran actor (“The Batman,” “Kimi,” “Big Little Lies”), eschews standard medium-shot/POV pedestrian-movie grammar. She composes the film out of vivid close-ups, using each shot (a cocktail, a glance, a social-media cutaway) to tell a story, drawing us into the center of an encounter so that we’re both gazing at it and experiencing it. Her technique is immersive; this is the work of a natural filmmaker.

I wouldn’t call “Blink Twice” a horror film, but it is rooted in some pretty horrific stuff. It’s about a naive but socially ambitious waitress at a fancy catering company, Frida (Naomie Ackie), who gets herself invited to the private island of a famous tech billionaire named Slater King (Channing Tatum). Once there, she joins the other select young women who have been invited, as well as the guests who are there (most of whom work for the company, King-Tech), and embarks on a lavish party vacation that never ends. Set against the backdrop of a tropical paradise, the fancy drinks keep flowing; the psychedelic drugs keep getting distributed; the foodie dinners keep getting served; and the accommodations (exotic perfumes, wire-thick sheets, complimentary clothes) are those of the ultimate dream resort.