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Zoë Kravitz breaks down that twist

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for Blink Twice.

Zoë Kravitz knows that audiences will have many questions by the time the credits roll on her directorial debut Blink Twice — and that’s exactly the way she wants it.

“There’s a lot of open-ended questions that I hope spark conversations,” Kravitz tells Entertainment Weekly. “Is this the beginning of something or is this the end of something? Is it the continuation of something? I think those are all up for debate, and I’m curious what that makes people feel.”

Blink Twice (formerly known as Pussy Island), which Kravitz also wrote alongside E.T. Feigenbaum, stars Naomi Ackie as Frida, a cocktail waitress tired of being overlooked who gets invited to newly-reformed, post-canceled billionaire tech mogul Slater King’s (Channing Tatum) private island for what seemed like a nonstop, drug-fueled party. She soon discovers that paradise isn’t all it seems when her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) goes missing, and none of the other partying vacationers seem to care — or even remember meeting her days earlier.

Frida finds an unlikely ally in fellow party guest Sarah (Adria Arjona), a beloved reality TV star, who at first seems like she is jealous of Frida and Slater’s connection. But the two women team up to discover what has been happening to them: the men are assaulting the women every night and then making them forget the horrors via an amnesia-inducing poison perfume. Eventually, Frida also remembers that she had been on the island and endured the same trauma a year earlier.

Channing Tatum, ‘Blink Twice’.

Zachary Greenwood/Amazon


Frida and Sarah figure out that snake venom makes them immune to the poison, so they secretly dose the other women to make them all remember, too. Horrified by what has been done to them, the women attack and kill their abusers in a bloodbath — but Frida decides to save Slater after dosing him with his own amnesia poison by secretly adding it to his vape. A time jump then reveals that Frida gets her revenge by taking control of Slater’s life and company, finally in a position of power as CEO, while she keeps him in a confused, subservient daze by dosing him with the poison.

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Kravitz loved subverting expectations by having Frida and Sarah become allies instead of enemies and says that their friendship is her “favorite relationship in the movie.”

“I’ve had that situation happen where there’s jealousy and competition because whether it’s true we both want the same thing or something, or we know we’ve been trained to think there’s not enough room for both of us here or whatever it is,” she tells EW. “I’ve had that experience where I realized, ‘Wait, do I actually dislike this person, or it’s just this thing getting in the way?’ And those have led to some of my best friendships when I stopped playing the jealous game and actually got to know somebody.”

Working in those overt feminist themes by depicting women who are there for each other rather than competing was “a really interesting arc to explore,” Kravitz adds. “It can feel so small, but it’s something that happens in these micro-waves all the time that we don’t really get to explore so much. And on top of that, I was interested in the situation where maybe we don’t like each other at first, maybe there’s this catty thing happening, but when s— hits the fan, none of that matters. And then we get to really see each other and take care of each other.”

Naomi Ackie and Adria Arjona, ‘Blink Twice’.

Carlos Somonte/Amazon


While the first two-thirds of the movie plays out like a suspenseful psychological thriller, the last act of the film sets it all on fire — literally, as Slater’s house burns down and figuratively, as the women get even with the men who had been assaulting them. For Kravitz, transitioning into those bloody action scenes as a first-time director was a challenge.

“Action is a whole different beast,” she says. “So to go from not directing anything to directing action sequences that have blood, and you want it to feel real, that was really difficult. It was trying to ride that line of making it what it needs to be, but not to the point where it’s too much and makes people want to look away. Making sure we really keep the real emotion, specifically in the women, in their eyes and everything. Trying to really keep it grounded in a way.”

Because the action wasn’t “happening for no reason,” Kravitz didn’t want it to become unbelievable at any point. While the reasons behind the violence were rooted in very real, very serious trauma, she also wanted to “make it fun to watch.”

“Because there’s a sweet revenge,” she explains. “It’s something that we like culturally, which is also kind of complicated and interesting, but trying to balance all those things together was quite a journey.”

Channing Tatum and Zoë Kravitz, ‘Blink Twice’.

Carlos Somonte/Amazon


When it came to filming all those death scenes, Kravitz reveals that Christian Slater, who plays Slater’s right-hand man, Vic, had the most fun with his seemingly never-ending final breaths as he slowly choked to death on his own blood in one of the film’s funniest gags.

“That whole sequence is pretty amazing,” Kravitz says with a laugh. “I think he probably wins the death scenes or the gruesome scenes, and then the whole bit with him continuing on the couch for so long is just so funny. The guy that just won’t die. He takes the cake there.”

She laughs again. “You’re like, ‘You’re still here?’ It’s one of those jokes that, when we wrote it, we were like, ‘This could be funny or very, very stupid. We think it’s funny, but I don’t know.’ And he kind of saved that bit, and you need that — you need that release, even for a moment. I think it’s important to have.”

Blink Twice is now playing in theaters.

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