Category: 2 stars

Forget an intro, I’m jumping right into it.

I did not like Frida, our main character. Not in a “Doug, I hope you die” way but definitely in a “we will never be friends” way. Why didn’t I like Frida? Glad you asked, I made a list.

• She is irresponsible. Your super’s coming and you don’t have money so your roommate has to cover you and when it comes up you say, “oh, about that.” Drives me fucking nuts. The behavior of someone who knows her roommate’s got her, so it is what it is.
• She’s mean. Okay, look, we’ve all had the friend who’s sneaking around with someone she’s not supposed to be sneaking around with. Do not randomly lash out at her while you’re at work and then say it’s because you don’t want to see her get hurt.
• She’s selfish. YOUR HOMIE JUST GOT BITTEN BY A VIPER AND THERE’S NO HOSPITAL HELLOOOOOOO. Look, I’m sorry your childhood trauma has made you feel invisible. But the minute your snake-bitten friend says she wants out, y’all gotta dip, oh my god. I don’t want you to be a perfect friend, but you’re a bad friend!

All of this made me feel like Frida was in her early twenties, which is hilarious because they gave her Angela Bassett’s wig from 9-1-1.

WHY DID THEY GIVE THIS BEAUTIFUL GIRL AN AUNTIE WIG?!

Are you twenty-four or fifty-four? Which is it?! Anyway, I didn’t like her. It’s also worth noting that all three of the examples above end up with her best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) bearing the brunt of Frida’s bullshit, which will become relevant later.

And look: I get that we don’t always have to like our main character. I get that we should get to have women characters we don’t like. I get that perfect characters make for boring stories. But my point stands.

My beef with Rape Island is that it’s too real. If you read enough horror short stories, you’ll find a seemingly endless stream of them that end with “And then he kills her!” It’s always a bit of a let down because it feels more realistic than creative. You’ve already taken us on this otherworldly journey, why stop now?

Here’s the world that I know: when I went to UCF, it was common knowledge that one of the fraternities on campus had a rape room. You think in a world of Jeffrey Epsteins, there isn’t going to be more than one Rape Island? Now the magic potion becomes roofies, the private island becomes an Epstein Island, and just like that I’m no longer in a fantasy world of Blink Twice: I’m back to our exact reality and they’re one and the same. That sucks. We’ve gone from a horror movie to historical fiction and it’s not what I signed up for. BOOOO.

And then audiences are treated a rape scene from the victim’s point of view. I suppose that’s the shocking part, the horrific part. It just made me feel ill. I know it’s not supposed to make audiences feel good, but I was excited for a more sci-fi/fantasy reveal.

There is a Message to this movie and I can see how for the message to get across, it kind of needed to be Rape Island and not a “we’re doing secret experiments on you like M. Night Shyamalan in Old” island.

The movie I wanted versus the movie I got. Two scripts diverge in the woods: one is a film that has me eating out the palm of its hand like a rabid, gore-starved monster and the other is Blink Twice. It’s fine. I’m fine.

We all know the horror trope of The Final Girl. I think it would have been fucking stellar for Kravitz to have given us a little bit more. Oh, you thought you were gonna get a final girl? How about four or five. It would have been a triumphant and beautiful subversion of expectations. And – at least in the opening night, sold-out theater that I was in – people would’ve eaten that shit up.

This times four!!! I want it! Give it to meeeeee

When the ladies first started stabbing these dudes and killing them and shit, people were cheering. And then Heather (Trew Mullen) gets killed and it’s a complete vibe shift. I think I heard someone behind me whisper, “she can’t be dead,” which is clearly what Kravitz wanted and she delivered a really potent emotional shot. Mission accomplished but this mission sucked. God it would’ve been so fucking cool.

That said, she did give us two Final Girls, which is more than we normally get, so yay I guess.

Why was Alia Shawkat here? As one dimensional as her best-friend-canary-in-the-coal-mine character was, literally anyone could’ve done this role. I’m not saying she shouldn’t be getting her paper, I’m saying: if I have Alia Shawkat at my disposal, you bet your sweet ass she’s going to do a lot more than get high and go home. But idk, maybe that’s all that she wanted to do. I feel a little like Kravitz Drew Barrymore’d us à la Scream so maybe that was the goal? Not sure, seems odd, lol.

Alright, here’s the good shit:

• I’m in love with Adria Arjona. My first conscious memory of seeing Adria Arjona was on a billboard for Netflix’s Hit Man. I thought she looked like the Sofia Boutella version of Penelope Cruz. And then I watched Hit Man and she was fucking delightful on screen. Palpable energy, excellent comedic timing, just fucking great.
  
  I know people will be talking about Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum’s performances – as well they should. But Adria Arjona breathed so much life into the second act of this movie to the point where we might’ve even forgotten we were watching a horror film. I’m excited to see Adria Arjona in more stuff, she’s fun to watch.
  
• Oh shit, I’m in Twist City! Twist: none of the girls actually know each other. Twist: you’re on Rape Island. Twist: you and your new friends are killing all the dudes who brought you to Rape Island. Twist: YOU’VE BEEN TO RAPE ISLAND BEFORE? TWIST: CREEPY CLEANING LADY HAS BEEN TRYNA HELP YOU OUT THIS WHOLE TIME?! TWIST: GEENA DAVIS IS ONE OF THE FEMALE CHAUVINIST PIGS THAT BOOK IS ABOUT?! (Lol actually no, that’s not quite what the book was about.) TWIST: YOU’RE THE WIFE OF A TECH BILLIONAIRE WHO IS NOW YOUR PUPPET. I love a good twist and here I have a baker’s dozen.

• I was reminded that I’m a whore for gore. The scene where the dudes die was pretty fucking great. Graphic as shit, badass. My only beef is that I wish they’d gotten their asses kicked even more. Ten points.

I guess I should talk about the ending that I feel weirdly dispassionate about, to be honest. I got there as a viewer and was like, “sure, makes sense,” but it didn’t feel like a “fuck yeah!” She gets her revenge and does so in that it does have a badass flip to it. Still, I think the ending didn’t have the triumphant, emotional resonance I would’ve wanted. For example, if Jess had said something like, “one day I want to build an aquarium” in Act I and at the end Frida uses her billions to build the Jess Last Name Aquarium in her honor.

Verdict: I think Blink Twice will get a lot of comparisons to Get Out, but it didn’t nestle its way into my brain the same way. I’m not getting the PTSD movie flashbacks like I did have Peele’s directorial debut. In terms of lasting power, it feels pretty middle-of-the road to me. Still, it’s a fun movie (until it’s not) that gets its message across really well. It’s beautifully shot and the actors carried all of their roles in really chilling ways that’ll make you feel a little insane. And in that way, the execution is easy on the fucking eyes. Average-ish story + excellent movie making = 3.5 out of 5 stars. Sorry, Zoë, can’t give you the four.

Oh look at that, no contributions to my overall horror journey. This is probably why you’ve got the 3.

8/30/24 EDIT: I was talking to my friend Valerie about this over the phone and she interrupted me to say “stop yelling at me!” so I suppose I have stronger feelings about this than I thought. As it turns out, the ending did indeed piss me off. I just didn’t want to get into it because I was so tired of all the other shit. But it’s days later and I’ve slept twelve hours so here are all the reasons the ending sucked:

• Frida gets hers, and…? Okay, so yay for Frida now getting all of her financial needs met. She’s powerful, she doesn’t have to worry about her super anymore, she’s rich. So what? Literally So. Fucking. What. Does she help Sarah get her big break? Does she do something to honor Jess? Like build a survivors’ center in her name? Does she take care of her family? No? This is revenge, it isn’t justice, and it shows that Frida, as cunning as she may be, is just as selfish at the end of the movie as she was at the beginning.
  
• There’s no depth here. The way they’ve framed Frida’s triumph suggests this shit begins and ends with Slater King. Fuck you, do you think I’m stupid? Or is Frida stupid? Aren’t you curious who made the pills for him? And when you find that out, do you really think Slater King is the only motherfucker using these pills? This could’ve been the perfect set up to a revenge slasher sequel and I am irate that I’ve been robbed.

Actually taking the ending into account, my revised rating is 2.5 stars.

05/06/2025 EDIT: This movie continues to piss me off. Re-revising down to 2 stars.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The first two thirds of this movie were amazing. I have two primary qualms about the third act.

What exactly was the plan here? When Cooper reveals himself to be the killer to Lady Raven, it’s a great way of getting out of the arena. But then what? He can’t exactly kill a pop super star without people noticing. And there’s no way he was going to let her go, just so she could name him to the police. For as calculated as he is, it would’ve been nice to say a sort of I-rigged-your-car-to-blow-up plan fall apart. At least it would have made sense for his ultimate goal of continuing to live his normal life.

The ending twist wasn’t twisty enough. I feel like the big twist was a let down because of the way I was set up. Here’s the set-up:

We’re at their home when the profiler approaches Rachel and asks if she wants a ride to her sister’s so she can be with her kids. Rachel declines. Immediately my brain does the Cardi B voice and says, “That’s weird……….that’s suspicious” because in a movie like this one it IS weird and it IS suspicious, thank you Cardi. Then the profiler leaves and Rachel is alone in the house and she puts on a pot of tea. Is it to calm her down? Or is she expecting company? Something else?

Then Cooper (Josh Hartnett) enters and I am at the edge of my seat. Having Rachel and Cooper alone in this scene strips away any need for pretense. There are no kids, no cops: we’re about to get the real deal between the both of them. Was Rachel the mastermind and Josh the executioner? Is he afraid of her now that he’s potentially gotten them both caught? Or had he done this before, she found him out, and he promised to stop but continued and now she’s had it? Or perhaps she was the killer the whole time and he’s just clean-up crew? What is it?! Because I’m not buying those whole doting housewife of a local firefighter hero act. I am foaming at the mouth Rachel, reveal yourself and your unsavory underbelly, I want to see it!!!

But no. Rachel doesn’t have an unsavory underbelly, what Rachel had was a hunch. She’s the one who tipped the cops off about the concert. That’s it. That’s the big twist. Did I mention that Rachel is played by Alison Pill? It’s worth noting because you could’ve given this character so much more depth and complexity and I was disappointed because when it comes to this character, what you see is exactly what you get. She is the doting housewife we meet in her first scene and nothing else: she is as flat and one dimensional as she seems. Perhaps that’s the twist in itself, but I hated it and I found it boring.

A tertiary, less pivotal qualm: poor Saleka Shyamalan. One day she might be a really strong actor, but whatever day that is or was, it didn’t happen while they were filming Trap. In the third act she’s given the clunkiest bit of dialogue while trying to trigger Cooper and it ends up coming off as almost laugh-out-loud funny. The dialogue in that scene was already weak and she wasn’t a strong enough actress to pull it off.

Another thing that was strange was that, while Saleka Shyamalan and Ariel Donoghue are fourteen years apart in real life, they look the same age in the movie. The dialogue reflects the age gap and we certainly can’t blame actors for having good genes, but perhaps the make-up artists could have done more to age Lady Raven up a bit.

Okay wait, I do have one more. In the third act, HOW ARE THE COPS SO LAUGHABLY TERRIBLE AT THEIR JOBS. Listen, I do not have faith in cops. But usually cops in Hollywood are portrayed as having a baseline level of competence that we did not see here. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so exhausting. By the nine millionth time Cooper escapes you have me thinking, “REALLY?! AGAIN?!” How dare you have me rooting for cops Mr. Shyamalan, I trusted you.

Compulsory bootlicking aside, there was a lot I loved about Trap.

The angst! That scene with the underwhelming twist? Still carried so. much. tension. Like knot-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach tension. Josh Hartnett and Alison Pill made me so fucking uncomfortable together and I was almost unbearably anxious, so kudos to the two of them and to the script in this scene. I loved getting the insight into how Cooper’s mind worked, how murder was something far off from him and how it was about to be personal for the first time. I love that Trap presents us with a character who is a terrible person (for the murders and such, duh) and a loving parent who’d do anything for his kids.

Truly, the angst! I really was on the edge of my seat  the entire time they were in the arena. It was cool to see how Cooper’s mind worked and how easily he was able to charm and lie his way out up until the very end of the second act.

One last note: I think we should give M. Night Shyamalan credit for being a funny dude. This wasn’t a horror comedy, but there were some funny moments in there. And it was weird and out of place because the humor didn’t feel like it served to diffuse any tension, it was just there. Why was it there, M. Night Shyamalan? I honestly think the answer is simply “for the lolz.” He put random shit in there ‘cause he thought it’d be funny and he was right. What a dork. What a weirdo. I didn’t love the ending, but I think I love you, sir. Thank you for this movie, my cortisol levels do not appreciate you, but I do.

Verdict: 2.5 stars. Fuck you for the third act and how we got there but thank you for everything else.