BEFORE: This is the conundrum I often have in October - is this a horror movie, or is it NOT a horror movie? The IMDB lists it as a "thriller" and a "mystery" film - if I try to dive in any deeper than that, then I'll encounter spoilers and I don't want that, plus then the decision will kind of be taken out of my hands. So sometimes I just have to dive in and watch it, let the chips fall where they may. If this is NOT a horror movie in any way, shape or form, there's no real harm except to the integrity of the October horror chain, but, you know, it's survived worse.
Saul Williams carries over from "Sinners".
THE PLOT: When tech billionaire Slater King meets cocktail waitress Frida at his fundraising gala, he invites her to join him and his friends for a dream vacation on his private island. As strange things start to happen, Frida questions her reality.
AFTER: Well, I probably shouldn't have worried, because this IS a horror movie, just a different sort of horror movie than the ones we're all used to. There are no vampires here, no witches or ghosts or demons (other than inner ones) because it's more about how horrible people can be to each other, especially men toward women. Jeez, I don't want to give it away but there's just no way to talk about this film without giving something away. SPOILER ALERT, I guess, if you don't want to know what happens in this film than stop reading now, then come back but only IF you watched this movie. All right, we good?
This is a horror story in the way that the Harvey Weinstein story was a horror story, in the way that the Bill Cosby story was a horror story, in the way that the Diddy story was a horror story. OK, admittedly I didn't follow the details of the Diddy stories, but I heard people on TMZ talking about the freakout parties, and sure, what happens privately between people should remain private unless (and it's a pretty big unless) one person is exerting power or control over another person and making them do something they don't want to do. Which is what the Weinstein trials were about, the Cosby scandal and the Diddy trials were all about, people in power were using that power to get laid, one way or another. And then people started prosecuting the worst offenders, the #Metoo movement was in full swing, and it took down people like Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, and Brett Ratner (well, he was living on borrowed time, I can assure you) and then Kevin Spacey and James Franco and Aziz Ansari and Louis C.K. I can't even parse out which allegations were bona fide and which were exaggerated, there were that many and anyway, it's not my place to do so.
It got into politics, too, and New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo got in trouble for touching women without consent, and Pixar CEO John Lasseter lost his job for hugging too many employees - just hugging, he was a hugger and maybe that's the point where I started to wonder if things were going just a bit too far - I mean, do you want to live in a world where people are afraid to hug each other? But I get it, consent is important and nobody should be HUGGED without their consent, but then neither should they be given candy or bought lunch without their consent either, and really, you should never sing "Happy Birthday" to anyone unless you have explicit written consent to do so, and also you've made sure it is their birthday, because God forbid you trigger somebody by wishing them good tidings on the wrong day. Jee-SUS what is wrong with you post-millennials?
We live in a different world now, and though nobody took down Michael Jackson while he was (probably) touching young boys, cancel culture caught up with Diddy and R. Kelly and some record producers, along with that doctor for the U.S. gymnastics team, and a few mayors and congressmen around the U.S., but you know the big fish in politics got away, right? I don't even need to say the name but it rhymes with POTUS. Without Jeffrey Epstein to testify against him (awfully convenient what happened to him, just saying) and with Epstein's biggest helper now transferred to a day spa rather than a superMax prison, I'd lay odds we're never going to hear the truth about who's in those "files", if there are any files they're buried now with the Area 51 documents and the identity of the JFK assassin. Release the files? It's too late, they're already in the hands of the people who DON'T want them released, so they've been burned or buried or deleted by now, otherwise some newspaper would have printed them all.
Right, the movie, "Blink Twice" takes a bit of Diddy, a bit of Cosby and a whole lot of Epstein and mashes them all together, in the form of billionaire tech mogul Slater King, who recently resigned as CEO of his company for unspecified reasons. But he still hosts his annual gala event for his charitable foundation, and we follow a cocktail waitress named Frida who works at the event, along with her friend Jess. Once they're done serving the crowd, they change into evening gowns in the restroom and pretend to be guests - it works, Frida catches the eye of Slater King and they drink and dance and enjoy each other's company.
Once it's over, he invites Frida and Jess, his friends and their newfound companions to travel with him by private jet to his own private island - come on, say it with me this time, "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" How is that not a red flag for her? Who the hell has a private island, nothing good can happen on a private island, right? Well, it sure seems great at first, there's chef-designed food and custom cocktails a-plenty, plus weed and other drugs and they can all go swimming and fishing and sing and dance and be merry. It seems like all of Slater's business partners and personal friends all found dates at the gala, so this must be paradise, let's all enjoy it while it lasts - but the party keeps going, for days on end, and they all kind of lose track of time, as one does on a long vacation, or maybe it's the large amounts of alcohol and the drugs that's messing with everyone's brains. Yeah, that's probably it.
Slater's maid seems to recognize Frida, and calls her "Red Rabbit". Frida stumbles upon a room with a large supply of red gift bags, you know, but that could be anything, it could just mean that Slater is a player. I remember stories about Derek Jeter when he was playing for the Yankees, and he was in the habit of sending gift baskets to all his one-night stands after their time together. It's fine. It's all fine, right? At this point in the film I was kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, because the film was giving off strong "Midsommer" vibes. (See also "The Menu".)
Jess gets bitten by a snake, and the venom has a weird effect on her brain chemistry, suddenly she's not sure what's real any more, or maybe things have gotten a little TOO real. Is she remembering something she's forgotten, or has everyone else forgotten something that they were supposed to remember. What day is it, anyway? How long have we been on this island, and has anyone seen Jess lately? Wait, who's Jess, again?
I'm dancing all around it, of course, because I don't want to spoil it, but I'm really shocked that more people haven't been talking about this movie, because it seems as topical as today's headlines, and really, a lot of the headlines from the past eight years or so. This is the first film I've ever seen that had not just a parental advisory at the start, but also a trigger warning. No, really, I'm not kidding for once. For mature themes and sexual violence, like if you suffer from harassment PTSD or worse, perhaps this is not the film for you.
One very big NITPICK POINT is that at the start of the film, we see Frida watching a video of Slater King issuing a very public apology, which suggest some kind of impropriety, admittedly they don't specify whether that's sexual, financial, or if he's just getting cancelled for being too woke or something. But it seems like he did something very bad, if he needs to give an interview just to apologize for it. Yet Frida seems intent on meeting him at the gala anyway, so this makes no sense at the start of the film, and then when we learn some more stuff near the end of the film, it makes even less sense. There are very few instances where people were lining up to date Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby or Diddy after the scandals broke - unless some misguided women out there just thought they could change them. Yeah, good luck with that. But I thought at first that maybe we were seeing a flash-forward to the end of the film at the start of the film, that would have maybe made a tiny bit more sense.
Directed by Zoë Kravitz
Also starring Naomi Ackie (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Channing Tatum (last seen in "10 Years"), Alia Shawkat (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Christian Slater (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Simon Rex (last seen in "Superhero Movie"), Adria Arjona (last seen in "Hit Man"), Haley Joel Osment (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Liz Caribel Sierra, Levon Hawke, Trew Mullen, Geena Davis (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), Kyle MacLachlan (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Cris Costa, Maria Elena Olivares, Tiffany Persons, Aaron Himelstein (last seen in "Avengers: Age of Ultron"), Ben Jacobson, Caroline Forsythe, Garret Levitz, Regina Guerrero, Kerry Ardra (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Julian Sedgwick, Mika Kubo, Eduardo Lopez Morton, Emire Arellano, with cameos from Zoë Kravitz (last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Story"), Lenny Kravitz (last seen in "American Symphony")
RATING: 5 out of 10 exfoliating masks
No comments:
Post a Comment