A summer release calls for star power. Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut has a star-studded cast while taking advantage of its release window by setting the film on a beautiful private island with pool parties, drinks and hallucinogens galore. The luxurious lifestyle displayed will have audiences sharing the same sentiment as Blink Twice's main character, Frida, when she exclaims early in the film: "I need a vacation."
Blink Twice follows best friends Frida and Jess (played by Naomi Ackie and Alia Shawkat, respectively), who are cocktail waitresses struggling to pay their rent. One day, they get an unusual invite to the private island of a tech billionaire, Slater King played by Channing Tatum. Everyone's having a good time until Frida realizes she's experiencing lapses in her memory, but nobody believes her.
The characters in the film are all given their own rooms in a mansion on a large plot of land. It would be hard to imagine if the cast didn't have a vacation of their own while shooting on-location in Yucatan, Mexico, given the lush setting.
"It was work, but, like on any set, 90 per cent of the day you're not filming, so we had a lot of fun living and eating meals together," Simon Rex confirms to Exclaim! over Zoom, accompanied by co-stars Shawkat and Christian Slater. "In scenes later in the film with heavy subject matter, we got to work. It wasn't a party, and we had to be very specific."
The cast of Blink Twice is rounded out by many different generations of actors, including the veteran Kyle MacLachlan, while newcomer Levon Hawke takes on his first major role. The casting choices lend themselves to the film's themes about power dynamics within social elite groups and vying to become a celebrity.
"It comes naturally with the authenticity of power. Everyone knows someone who is the alpha male, the alpha female, and the people who walk around it," says Shawkat. "In the film, Frida is definitely the alpha in my character's friendship with her as she pushes me to do things."
One of the formal devices used that embodies the parallel between an alpha and a follower is a striking costume choice in one of the defining moments in the film. After a long night of partying, the women of the group run across their mansion's front lawn. It is unclear if they are being chased or simply having a good time.
The women are wearing long, white dresses that evoke purity, but also something exploitative. The outfit resembles Kravitz's clothing in Mad Max: Fury Road, which carried the same themes of women fighting against the patriarchy.
"Zoë was designing the dress up until the day we needed to wear them," recalls Shawkat. "She wanted us to look like Greek goddesses while also being sexy and somehow culty at the same time. It wasn't an easy concept to pin down, and it was important to get right because the dress is everything. The dress did come together, though, and the way it all looks when we put them over our faces gets witchy in a cool way, like we entered a séance, and then the bows contradict that by being innocent and feminine."
There are bound to be archetypes found at a party featuring celebrities. The most curious one is Rex's character, Cody, an obsessive chef and wine enthusiast who's very sentimental about his cutting knife.
"My brother is a chef, so, in preparing for the role, I noticed how much he really cares," says Rex. "It's funny how Zoë wrote the character in the script about the knife, because that's how my brother is. I remember he once gave me this Japanese cutting knife, which was a big deal to him. I'm like, 'Okay, it's just a knife, dude.'"
Jess takes on the role of the third-wheeler at the party, as Frida develops a relationship with Slater King. "I tried to embrace the freedom of being new to this luxurious world," explains Shawkat. "Jess is not always accustomed to a waiter filling our champagne. It is a mix of being thankful and questioning the lifestyle, too."
Slater, who plays Vic, Slater King's right-hand man, revelled in pursuing the character's mysterious qualities: "I enjoyed the sneakiness of leaving little sprinkles throughout my performance that reveal a little bit of what's happening behind the scenes."
Slater's slipperiness did not end with his performance, as he brags about winning the push-up contest on set. Rex acknowledges, "There were definitely some power dynamics at play in real life, too."