For many women, the realization that the world isn’t fair is a gradual dawning. You encounter your first double standard and then another, and eventually come to the exhaustive understanding that there is, in fact, a patriarchy and a glass ceiling and both must, in fact, be smashed. For others, it arrives in a single, violent, dehumanizing episode. And it's that reality that gets expertly explored in Zoe Kravitz's deeply unsettling psychological thriller, Blink Twice.
Zoe Isabella Kravitz is essentially show-business royalty. The daughter of Lisa Bonet, who exudes the mystical energy of a healer, and Lenny Kravitz, who's been synonymous with the concept of “cool” since he broke big in the nineties, Kravitz was born with an already recognizable name that would ultimately dictate her experience of Hollywood and womanhood. There would those wanting to get close to her because of her name, and those wanting to stay far away for the same reason. Still, and against the advice of her parents—according to her—Kravitz chose show business herself.
Kravitz logged her first onscreen credits in films like No Reservations and The Brave One even before graduating high school. And after her freshman year of college, she decided to drop out to pursue acting full time.
More small roles came. It’s Kind of a Funny Story. Twelve. Californication. She then started to land small roles in much bigger productions—X-Men: First Class, the Divergent series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Mad Max: Fury Road. Offers for lead roles trickled in, but more often, they were for sidekicks and best friends.
Then came 2017's Big Little Lies, her breakout role and possibly the truest window into the real Kravitz as her character, Bonnie, has such a quiet confidence about her. (Though Kravitz has denied the comparisons.) And finally she landed a starring role, 2020’s High Fidelity, a gender-swapped second adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel (the first being the 2000 John Cusack classic that, yes, also starred her mother.) And, in addition to starring in the Hulu series, Kravitz also served as an executive producer and a writer.
In 2022, just months before filming for Blink Twice would begin, Kravitz starred in the most high-profile role of her career: Selina Kyle—Catwoman—opposite Robert Pattinson in The Batman.
Yet, despite so much success, there was still a little distance left to go. And directing seemed to be the next logical step.
McQueen. DuVernay. Peele . . . Kravitz?
The film stars Naomi Ackie (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), a compelling, empathy-inducing lead as Frida, a catering company wage-slave facing a choice between making rent, or making a move on her unlikely crush object, billionaire tech mogul Slater King, played by Kravitz's fiancé, Channing Tatum. Slater has recently been embroiled in some kind of scandal, and he’s on a standard-issue media-assisted image-rehabilitation tour that includes public apologies, the promise “I’m working on myself,” and some references to getting back to nature on his private island, where he’s growing his own crops and raising his own chickens. He meets Frida at a weird-as-hell benefit dinner and invites her on a dream vacation to the aforementioned private island. Very many things go horrifically wrong. And Frida will have to uncover the truth about Slater and his island if she and her friend want to make it out alive.
Blink Twice is a story designed to make people angry, then give them a target for all their rage. Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum are aiming to provoke recognition and righteous fury, and they rarely pull punches. Nearly a decade in the making, Kravitz’s bombshell social critique absolutely terrifies. But it also, weirdly, makes you laugh. Like, really laugh, Though it does at times rely too heavily on slapstick for my personal liking. (Frida is Bella Swan levels clumsy).
At its core, the film is a thoroughly effed-up meditation on power, a scathing commentary about the inequality between men and women and the corroded structures that govern society, a statement on gender, violence, trauma, revenge and entitlement, all blaring and blatant, with little room for ambiguity or interpretation. And that absolutely seems to be the point. The film essentially does what Don't Worry, Darling tried to do and as a result it doesn’t just suggest a recontextualization of who Kravitz is as a creator; it demands it. And by the time the credits role, one thing becomes clear; Zoe Kravitz has officially redefined herself as a creative force.
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