Was “Blink Twice” Inspired By P. Diddy's Parties?

It’s a moment we see shortly after we first meet Frida (Naomi Ackie), a discontented worker, in Zoe Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice. Frida is tired of being an ordinary server at the events of wealthy, inconsiderate people. Slipping into an evening gown with her best friend Jess (Alia Shakawat), Frida quite literally stumbles over Slater King (Channing Tatum), a billionaire with a troubled past. They immediately hit it off, and when Slater asks Frida if she wants to come with him and his friends on an island vacation, she jumps at the chance.

What ensues is an increasingly unhinged horror film, in the style of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, which seeks to examine the inequalities of power between men and women in our society. Does this movie get preachy? You bet it does. But the most disappointing – and surprising – thing about Blink Twice is how close the film comes to saying something really brave about how cycles of sexual abuse are perpetuated in the world of the wealthy, but then doesn't.

*Spoilers ahead*

Blink Twice’s Premise Is Braver Than Kravitz Knew

After flying to the island getaway, Frida and Jess immediately get caught up in the life of luxury. Slater King and his friends live off the oldest wines, the finest foods, and the heaviest drugs to keep their senses at a constant high in a raucous party that never ends. Frida is living the dream of any girl who daydreams about the wealthy bad boy with a past who will, somehow, come to love her above everyone else. “Are you having a good time?” Slater asks Frida and his other guests frequently, and at first, Frida really means it when she says that she is.

You don’t have to think very hard to realize what this premise sounds like – it bears uncommon similarities to the infamous island getaways where Jeffrey Epstein allegedly used to run a prostitution ring for the wealthy and powerful. Even if you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the few facts that we know so far about the story, and how it may eventually have led to Epstein’s death in prison.

Kravitz has claimed that any commonalities between Blink Twice and the Epstein story are coincidental, and that she only realized the similarity after the fact. Even if the similarity is a coincidence, however, the inherent similarity between the stories was an opportunity to push past the dialogue of what Kravitz calls “social satire plus class warfare plus gender politics.” Blink Twice was an opportunity to ask ourselves some questions. How did an island where such unspeakable acts occurred, which was frequented by some of the most high profile personalities in the world, go unnoticed for so long? How has its existence so easily been forgotten? These questions are horrifying, and had Kravitz stayed with them, she would have had a truly brave work of art on her hands.

Furthermore, since the news of P. Diddy's sex parties broke and the alleged abuse of women and underage boys and girls came out, many are comparing the film Blink Twice to Diddy's rumored trafficking ring. Eddie Griffin recently discussed publicly how P. Diddy put horse tranquilizers in the fruit punch they gave to children at his parties and even compared the incident to this movie since the party-goers in the film are tied up, drugged, tortured, and raped and the abusers give them perfume that makes the victims forget everything they experienced.

Whether the film was inspired by Epstein Island or P. Diddy's sex parties, we'll likely never know. The fact that the film veers away from the really brave questions is sad. But what’s more tragic is that, in many ways, the answer to them is already there, in the film, planted in plain sight. Slater King’s question comes over and over through the film, with increasing terror: “Are you having a good time?” It’s a question that accurately reflects the only virtue secular society upholds: the right to be enjoying yourself constantly. The notion that whatever we enjoy or like in the moment is our right has become the bedrock of much of our society. How do we determine if something is right or moral for our community, for our bodies, and for our spirits? In the world at large, it comes down to that same question: Are you having a good time?

But as Blink Twice (sort of) leads us to see, equating enjoyment with moral acceptability actually makes young girls prey to predators who would abuse them. Kravitz’s film stumbles upon the fact that rhetoric about empowerment and consent can easily be manipulated. At the very least, Blink Twice suggests, there is a moral line somewhere in the middle of the party that we’re missing as a society. Maybe enjoying yourself isn’t the only thing we should consider after all.

Blink Twice Fails the Women It Wants To Speak For

Blink Twice may have had the opportunity to be truly brave, but instead, the story takes a sharp turn when Frida and her once-nemesis on the island, Sarah (Adria Arjona), discover they’re being drugged and raped during the night by the millionaires who wine and dine them. Panicking, Frida and Sarah decide to find proof that Frida’s friend Jess was murdered and find a way to convince the other women on the island to join them in one last chance to fight back and achieve their freedom.

This is where the film really chickens out, refusing to address any of the pertinent questions that it has raised for us. How can the women on the island end their abuse? According to Blink Twice, our band of young women just need to come together in solidarity and turn against their male abusers, wreaking a night of havoc and destruction for a chance to achieve vengeance and freedom.

The film’s questions about sexual abuse and the role wealth and power play in it are valid; the solution it offers, however, is cheap. If we’re truly going to tell stories that help us get to the bottom of sexual abuse in the modern world, we need stories that aren’t afraid to be brutally honest with everyone – including women. Blink Twice isn’t willing to go really deep and ask why the girls in its story were willing to sign on for so many nights of drugged forgetfulness. Instead, Blink Twice is satisfied with the narrative that all men must, secretly, want to abuse women and that if they have the means, they will.

It’s the ending of Blink Twice that shows just how stuck back in the peak of the #MeToo movement the movie really is. After destroying most of the men on the island, Frida spares Slater King because she has found a way to control him by turning his own drugs against him. In a climactic scene where Frida arranges the arrest of Slater’s villainous therapist, we learn that Frida has married Slater and taken control of his company – all while controlling him with the forgetfulness drug he once used on her. 

It’s not just an ugly way to end a movie that has been pretty horrifying. This kind of all-men-are-rapists and women-need-to-take-control philosophy went out of style four years ago when the #MeToo movement lost its shine. There are some abusers who are men, it’s true, and women in abusive situations do need to be able to take control of their own lives. But a mere reversal of the roles, where a woman controls the man who abused her, isn’t progress as a society. It’s just petty revenge dressed up as justice.

This is why Kravitz’s Blink Twice ultimately fails to serve the women it’s claiming to support. There are no real solutions about how to step outside cycles of abuse or how to build a world where men and women can treat each other with respect. In Blink Twice, there’s only power and those who are enjoying themselves enough to use it.

I went into Blink Twice almost hoping that the film’s #MeToo marketing rhetoric would be deceptive. And I almost got what I hoped for since the film contained some shockingly honest moments about how sex abuse rings come to be so easily in our society. But in the end, Blink Twice is just another cliché feminist morality tale about how men subjugate women. And maybe it’s just me, but that’s not my idea of a good time.