Don't you just hate it when you get invited to the private island resort of an eccentric tech billionaire only to find out it's a ruse for some seriously dark shenanigans? Now, technically that's never happened to us (we just found Glass Onion really immersive honestly). It is however the fate that Zoë Kravitz's upcoming directorial debut Blink Twice has in store for Naomi Ackie, whose cocktail waitress Frida finds herself being whisked away for sun, sea, sand, and a side order of seriously sketch behaviour by Channing Tatum's megarich Slater King in the sinister new trailer for the buzzy psychological thriller. Check it out:
Bougie secluded getaway? Check. Confiscated phones? Check. Everybody wearing the same clothes every day? Check. A secret box of polaroids, stashed in a heavily locked cupboard, discovered by our increasingly fraught protagonist? Check, check, and treble check! The verdict's in folks — it looks like we've got a banger on our hands. This may be Kravitz's directorial debut (and OG title Pussy Island is obviously way better than the more derivative Blink Twice), but everything about this new trailer feels like the product of a clear vision and real conviction. From the subversive Tatum turn as Slater, to the precision-tooled escalation of proper horror imagery (King's harem all in white framed against the dead-of-night forest is truly haunting) and Kravitz's knife-sharp skewering of bourgeois ritualism, there's more than a hint of the social horror of Jordan Peele's _Get Out_to proceedings here.
Here's the official synopsis: "When tech billionaire Slater King (Tatum) meets cocktail waitress Frida (Ackie) at his fundraising gala, sparks fly. He invites her to join him and his friends on a dream vacation on his private island. It’s paradise. Wild nights blend into sun soaked days and everyone’s having a great time. No one wants this trip to end, but as strange things start to happen, Frida begins to question her reality. There is something wrong with this place. She’ll have to uncover the truth if she wants to make it out of this party alive."
Among the starry ensemble who also have a ticket to Slater King's, er, feline resort are Alia Shawkat, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Kyle MacLachlan, Haley Joel Osment and Geena Davis. Will Ackie find a way off King's island? Are the tech billionaire's secret polaroids just cute cat pics after all? (Doubtful.) And will movie characters ever learn how to spot a red flag when it's being waved in their faces? Only time will tell. One thing we do know though: you won't catch us blinking even once when Blink Twice lands in cinemas on 23 August.