What’s going on?: Naomi Ackie (left) and Adria Arjona in ‘Blink Twice’.
BLINK TWICE *1/2 (102 minutes) MA
There are some neat stylistic touches in the first reels of Blink Twice, but what starts out as a promising directorial debut from actress Zoë Kravitz (High Fidelity soon degenerates into a listless, tedious and bloody mystery thriller.
Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Sarah (Adria Arjona), two snarky, down-on-their-luck waitresses are invited to the private island of Slater King (Channing Tatum), a scandal-ridden tech billionaire with lots of friends who enjoy drinking and drugs.
While everyone is having a relaxing good time free of mobile signals and being waited on by smiling, aloof servants, Frida begins to twig that – now brace yourself for a total shock – nothing is as it seems.
Early on, Kravitz is big on colour schemes and tightly composed shots, but the direction oddly loosens once the mystery element kicks in and Frida begins investigating the truth behind the island’s secrets.
Unspooling like a poor man’s M Night Shyamalan movie, or a sub-standard Twilight Zone episode, the film becomes a mélange of twists and clues, with Kravitz (who co-wrote with High Fidelity scribe E.T. Feigenbaum) expecting you to try and figure out what is going on.
The head-scratching soiree simply becomes incoherent and tedious to watch, like the opposite of an Alfred Hitchcock film. The more you think about it, the less sense it makes.
Along with wanting to be a thriller, one senses that
Also, the whole “weird things happening on a remote island” plot device has become something of a cliche after The Menu, Glass Onion and the on-going Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Yawnsies.
TAKE MY HAND ** (102 minutes) M Sentimental, soft-edged and way too saccharine, this try-hard film should have tried harder it its attempt to meld a romance with the portrayal of a woman afflicted by multiple sclerosis.
Once a horse-loving teen in rural Australia, Laura (Radha Mitchell; Meg Fraser as the younger) is now a successful ex-pat living contentedly in London with her three boys and husband Jason (Bart Edwards) when her life is turned inside out by a devastating MS diagnosis.
Her career prospects shot and marriage the victim of a very well-timed tragedy, she returns home to dad (Darren Gilshenan) and mum (Robyn Gibbs), who has advanced MS.
Laura picks up with her old beau Michael (Adam Demos; Xavier Molyneux as the younger), who is divorced and has a horse-loving teenage daughter (Jessi Robertson). The spark of first love is still there and matters proceed down a predictable route, just like the rest of the film.
Melodrama has long served as a vehicle for tragedy and hardship, but director John Raftopolous can’t give the story the bite it needs, especially in the final act.
Veteran Mitchell (one of the producers) is fine and there are some good moments as the disease begins affecting her. There’s also a handful of nicely performed scenes between her and Demos(Sex/Life).
Overall, unfortunately, the film serves as yet another example of an Australian film too unsure of what it wants to be.
It begins as a schmaltzy family film – complete with over-bearing music and sugary, cliched dialogue – then tries unsuccessfully to pull off a dramatic gear change after a 20-year time skip. It doesn’t ring.
The scenes in London are clumsily handled; Laura’s career crash does not have the benefit of a workplace lawyer, and the film seems to have no idea what to do with her husband, who becomes too inconvenient to accommodate. Her three sons are ciphers.
It’s also a question as to why the film opens in 1999 with Laura’s teen years and all that laboured exposition.
The story is based on the experiences of the mother of producer Claire Jensz, wife of director Raftopoulos, who we see in a brief phone video at the end, accompanied by stats regarding MS.
A better film would have rendered such things unnecessary.