15 | ★★★✩✩ As tech billionaire Slater King, the Channing Tatum charm is deployed here like a secret weapon. Sincerity pours from King’s eyes as he apologises to the world for sexually inappropriate behaviour on waitress Frida’s TikTok app. The rent is overdue but soon Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her flatmate and co-worker Jess (Alia Shawkat) will get access to the inaccessible by serving drinks to King and his fellow super-rich elite at a black-tie event.
We know this must be part of some kind of cunning plan. But when he invites Frida and Jess who have disguised themselves as guests to his private island on his private plane, our suspicions cannot survive that sincerity, which, not to over-egg a point, is so damn sincere. Recently seen opposite Scarlett Johansson as the steely-eyed Apollo mission director in , a lot here rides on Tatum’s ability to turn on charm with an ease the rest of us turn on a TV.
In her directorial debut it allows Zoë Kravitz to sustain the vague possibility of a rom-com while building the bones of something horrific. The scene in which Frida arrives at the tropical island to find herself in the lap of casual, absurdly expensive luxury could be set to Shirley MacLaine singing in Kravitz builds this false sense of security with great skill. The reveal (it would be as spoiler to reveal more) in which King and his other seemingly fun male guests including a wasted (in both senses) Christian Slater is also terrifically crafted.
But having jettisoned all the rom for the adrenaline of thriller in which men are the enemy of women and decency, Kravitz and her co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum ( ) pay much less attention to the detail of female comeuppance.
If the reveal had been earlier and the fightback cleverer, Adria Arjona’s reality show contestant would have had the moment for which the the film sets her up. A better film about how monstrous men can be would have had a stab at telling us why..
