Blink Twice review: ‘men are the enemy of women’

15 | ★★★✩✩

As tech billionaire Slater King, the Channing Tatum charm is deployed here like a secret weapon. Sincerity pours from King’s eyes as he apologises to the world for sexually inappropriate behaviour on waitress Frida’s TikTok app.

The rent is overdue but soon Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her flatmate and co-worker Jess (Alia Shawkat) will get access to the inaccessible by serving drinks to King and his fellow super-rich elite at a black-tie event. We know this must be part of some kind of cunning plan. But when he invites Frida and Jess who have disguised themselves as guests to his private island on his private plane, our suspicions cannot survive that sincerity, which, not to over-egg a point, is so damn sincere.

Recently seen opposite Scarlett Johansson as the steely-eyed Apollo mission director in Fly Me To The Moon, a lot here rides on Tatum’s ability to turn on charm with an ease the rest of us turn on a TV. In her directorial debut it allows Zoë Kravitz to sustain the vague possibility of a rom-com while building the bones of something horrific. The scene in which Frida arrives at the tropical island to find herself in the lap of casual, absurdly expensive luxury could be set to Shirley MacLaine singing If They Could See Me Now in Sweet Charity.