★★★★☆

What did movies do before they had tech billionaires for villains? It says something about the young men who have done well out of the internet that there’s something instantly plausible in the idea of a super-wealthy boy-king with behaviour problems. 

Blink Twice gives us Channing Tatum as one such mogul, his charm and good looks tinged with just the lightest touch of creepiness. At the start of the film he is at the end of a year’s rehabilitation for unspecified crimes against humanity. Perhaps he bought a social media site. 

Whatever it is he did, it’s not enough to stop Frida, played by British actress Naomi Ackie, from being obsessed with him. Serving him drinks at an event where she is a waitress, she is ecstatic when he invites her and her flatmate to his private island. Is this a good idea? Obviously not. 

The intriguing thing about this film isn’t so much “will Tatum turn out to be a wrong ’un?” as “what exactly is it that he’s up to?” Everything on the island seems to be decadent — champagne by the pool, gourmet dining, hallucinogenic drugs – but why does Frida keep waking up with dirt under her fingernails? Where has her friend gone, and why can no one else remember her?

The female characters are rounded, with more to do than just run around and scream

The formula for girl-in-trouble movies is well-known, but Zoe Kravitz, directing for the first time with a script she co-wrote, does an excellent job of delivering enough twists to keep us guessing about what will come next, right to the end of the bloody final act. The female characters are rounded, with more to do than just run around and scream. 

It feels like Kravitz might have wanted to say more about cancellation and male abuse of power than we end up with on the screen. Perhaps she originally did: there are a couple of plot loose ends that hint at scenes cut to keep things moving. If so, it was the right choice: the result is a tight film that accelerates from eerie black comedy to gripping thriller.