Directing: B-
Acting: A-
Writing: C
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C

Blink Twice opens first with a trigger warning. This is the first of many things in this film to be ambivalent about. In this case, it sets a tricky sort of precedent. On the one hand, surely some people will appreciate it. On the other hand, I spent the first half of the movie wondering exactly how horrible the “mature themes and depictions of violence, including sexual violence” we were primed to expect would be, as depicted onscreen.

How bad is it, then? The good news is, we get only one, relatively brief scene, which is not excessively explicit or graphic. It is still, however, objectively horrible—it depicts a kind of dark, unconsentual debauchery that might have fit in, more explicitly depicted, in a movie like Caligula. It also marks a sharp tonal turn from the rest of the movie, which has a lightness and even winking vibe to it, until we discover the billionaire tech bros hosting this private island getaway are horrible monsters.

I can’t decide whether the movie would have worked better without the trigger warning. There’s something to be said for a true reveal of monsters who seemed at first to be charming. As it is, we are primed not to trust these billionaire White guys from the start. Not that we need a trigger warning for that to be the case, mind you. But the trigger warning was apparently not part of the original plan, and was reportedly added just before release, because the movie It Ends with Us received criticism for not having one. (The trailers for that movie were relatively subtle about it but still made it fairly clear that domestic violence would factor in the story.)

There are plenty of insensitive people who love to poke fun at the very notion of “trigger warnings.” There are still times when such things are very much appropriate. I just can’t decide how useful it could possibly have been in Blink Twice. But this is mostly because I can’t decide precisely what to make of the movie overall. It would seem director and co-writer Zoë Kravitz, in her directorial feature film debut, took a wild swing with this one—and did not quite hit. I have a lot of questions.

I would love to know more about Kravitz’s intentions with several of her artistic choices. Casting a Black woman, Naomi Ackie, as the main character, Frida, has to have been a deliberate choice. The rest of the cast of women includes several White women and a few other women of color; the men who have brought them to this island are all exclusively White, all but one of them middle-aged (some of you may be disheartened to learn that this definitively includes Channing Tatum). But it’s a curious choice for this film never to address race directly at all, and by default place White women, women of color, and Black women on an equal playing field. This gives Blink Twice a problem shared with the Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale, in that it simply does not reflect reality.

And Kravitz, while not directly depicting reality—we all know this is a movie—is clearly trying to reference reality with this movie. It directly quotes the “believe women” adage, and at times seems to be trying to be a version of Glass Onion, contextualized in the “Me Too” movement. Compounding matters is the inclination of Blink Twice to be “fun” in a similar way, which trivializes sexual assault at the same time it purports to be taking it seriously. The result is something a lot less fun than the marketers of this movie would lead us to believe. We get some “scorned woman” revenge, and an inevitable turning of the tables, but it rings hollow, engaging in the very tropes Kravitz seems to think she is innovating.

Without getting too far into spoiler territory, I will say that key plot points involve memory manipulation, and the insistence of tech billionaire Slater King (Tatum) that “forgetting is a gift.” It would seem there is a splash of Bill Cosby going on here, and as the story goes on, our heroine figures out a way to conjure her repressed memories. There’s a turn at the end involving King’s own memory that seems almost clever in the moment, but I now cannot make it make sense.

A movie like this only truly works when it has clarity of purpose, and that is the fundamental thing missing from Blink Twice. I cannot trash it completely, because it has excellent performances across the board, which alone would indicate that Kravitz has some bona fide directing talent. She got consistent performances out of a stacked cast, which includes Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, and even Geena Davis, who hasn’t had a high-profile film role in a good 25 years (she’s had several high-profile TV roles, to be fair). Casting Davis is both clearly deliberate and a bit on the nose, given her founding of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, 20 years ago now. Blink Twice has parity in male and female characters, although not one of the male characters is a good guy—something I’m sure will incense some far-right dipshits. Normally I would be here for it, but it only works if the movie sticks the landing.

Instead, I left Blink Twice with more questions than answers, and not in any satisfyingly provocative way. I’m talking basic plot points. This is a rare movie that is often beautifully shot and has intricately layered performances, but a baffling script and inscrutable editing. The actors perform with the conviction of people who understand the director’s vision, which leaves me to wonder what crucial details may have just wound up on the cutting room floor. Or maybe they are all just patting themselves on the back for being a part of a film that has “Something To Say,” but without fully understanding what the hell it’s saying exactly.

*He’s not the only thing here worthy of suspicion.*

Overall: B-