In its trailers for “Blink Twice,” Zoë Kravitz’s sleek directorial debut feature, Amazon and MGM are desperate to package the goods like a straightforward abduction thriller. But for Kravitz, best known as an actor ( “The Batman,” the Hulu series adaptation of “High Fidelity,” the HBO Steven Soderbergh film “Kimi” ), it’s a film about memory and power. How “Blink Twice” addresses those subjects, in a script Kravitz developed over seven years with co-writer E.
T. Feigenbaum, courts all kinds of spoilers. The spoiler-free description: Naomi Ackie, recent headliner of the Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” stars as a Los Angeles cocktail waitress invited by a reclusive tech billionaire, played by Channing Tatum, to hang out with his glam, dissolute friends played by Adria Arjona, Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment and others, at his private tropical island.
Things feel a little off from the beginning for the newbies played by Ackie and Alia Shawkat. As “Blink Twice” unwinds, its risky but rewarding swings between terror and black comedy, between #MeToo allegory and “Get Out” freakout, reveal Kravitz to be a quick study of how a film’s visual personality, its production and sound designs especially, can work on an audience’s subconscious. Kravitz grew up with perpetual, easygoing celebrity.
Her mother is actor Lisa Bonet, best known for “The Cosby Show” and “Angel Heart,” and her father (though they split when Z.