Aahana Swrup
‘Blink Twice,’ Zoë Kravitz’s psychological thriller film, lures the audience into an unsettling mystery that grows more sinister as it unravels. The narrative revolves around Frida, a waitress, who finds herself acquiring an invitation to tech billionaire Slater King’s private island after a chance meeting. Deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Frida embarks on a journey of a lifetime with her friend, Jess, accompanying Slater and his friends on a ceaseless vacation. However, as the days pass, Frida can’t shake the crippling feeling of wrongness, which only enhances in the wake of her blurry memories. Thus, dread creeps in as she realizes Jess has suddenly gone missing—without the other party-goers even noticing her absence.
Frida’s incautious venture into Slater’s Island remains ambiguously unnerving from day one, submerging the narrative in inexplicable intrigue. Therefore, as secrets about the island begin to come out in a crescendo, viewers are bound to be left craving clarity as the story arrives at its climax. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Blink Twice Plot Synopsis
Frida is a cocktail waitress with a fairly unexciting life who often finds herself internet-stalking Slater King, the CEO of a billion-dollar tech company. As such, it seems a stroke of luck when her workplace hosts a gala for the King Tech Foundation, landing her and her friend, Jess, in the room with Slater and his extensive guest list of who’s who. Consequently, the duo decides to use the opportunity to sneak into the party, dressed up as guests, which leads to an exciting accidental meeting with Slater himself. After the man takes an interest in Frida, the two end up spending the entire evening together.
At the end of the gala, Slater spontaneously invites Frida and Jess to his private island, where he and his friends are going away for an extended vacation. The two women mirror his spontaneity and accept the invitation, accompanying the billionaire on his private jet as one of his guests. Once they arrive at the island, the staff collects everyone’s phones—a non-mandatory gesture that both Frida and Jess find themselves complying with. As such, an unbelievable vacation commences, where the guests lavishly lounge the days away in pools, indulging in free-flowing drugs and alcohol.
Their extravagant days are followed by equally hedonistic evenings with delicious food and late-night acid trips. However, the days soon begin passing by in a blur, leading Frida to realize there are random holes in her memory. Still, she can’t find anything to complain about, given the newfound opulence she is surrounded with. Eventually, one night, something unexpected happens when Jess gets bitten by a venomous snake. Although she survives the bite—and Slater easily kills the snake—Jess grows paranoid, suddenly spooked by their presence on the island.
Nonetheless, Frida is too caught up in the thrill of her new life and negates her friend’s concerns. The next morning, Frida finds herself wandering out to a cabin that belongs to one of the helpers around Slater’s villa. After an odd interaction with the lady, Frida unwittingly takes a swig from a flask of snake venom. Shortly afterward, she realizes that she hasn’t seen Jess all morning. Worse yet, no one on the island seems to remember her friend’s existence at all.
As the oddities of her stay begin to creep up on Frida, she freaks out, inviting Sarah’s attention. Even though Sarah doesn’t remember Jess, she has a lighter with the latter’s name on it, proving her existence. Therefore, the two women realize something menacing must be happening on the island behind closed doors.
Blink Twice Ending: What is the Island’s Secret?
From the get-go, the ridiculous nature of Frida and Jess’ trip to Slater King’s private island remains evident. In fact, after the pair arrive in front of the ludicrous estate that will be their home for the coming future, they reference the same and joke about how they expect the billionaire to conduct human sacrifices on the trip. With Jess’ unannounced departure, the joke threatens to become a bleak reality. However, the actual truth remains much worse. After Frida and Sarah join forces, realizing they inordinately feel hallowed out and disoriented, the duo manages to unwrap one of Slater’s secrets. Slater keeps an array of red bags in the helper’s cabin that he often distributes to his friends, such as his therapist Rich, as gifts.
As it turns out, those bags contain bottles of Desideria perfume, the same ones that are present in every woman’s private room. Combining the discovery with one of Slater’s favored sayings, “Forgiving is a gift,” the two realize the perfume must be laced with a drug—likely found in the statement red flowers native to the island—that causes memory loss. However, instead of entirely erasing their memories, the perfume only dulls individuals’ past trauma. For the same reason, Slater has been handing vials off to his friends on the outside while using the island as a testing ground to perfect the formulae. Nevertheless, that isn’t where the island’s sickening reality ends.
Since Frida is the only one to remember Jess and bits and pieces of forgotten memories of her stay, she realizes she must have somehow counteracted the perfume’s effects. Consequently, it isn’t long before it dawns on her that she has only remembered Jess after accidentally drinking snake venom. Much like the women on the island, Slater also drugs his staff with perfume to make them forget about his misdeeds. However, some helpers retain their memories by drinking the snake venom, which gradually clears one’s hazy memories. As such, Frida and Sarah conclude they must sneak some into Camilla and Heather’s drinks to wake them up from the perfume’s spell without anyone noticing.
While Sarah takes up the front on that, Frida snoops around Slater’s office—which is luckily empty on account of the men’s fishing trip. While looking around for her phone, she comes across a box of Polaroids featuring moments of the forgotten night, which triggers her memories to flood back. Thus, the reality of Slater’s evil emerges. The billionaire and his friends have actually lured these women—most of whom didn’t know each other or Slater—out to his island to keep them subjugated for him and his friends to exploit. During the daytime, the men and women party the sunlight away, only for the horrors to begin at night when the men would brutally sexually abuse and rape these women.
However, by the time the next day rolled around, the women ceased to remember a single minute of their trauma due to Slater’s perfume. For the same reason, as every night brought new trauma and the day a new erasure, the women became more and more disoriented. They could tell something was wrong but couldn’t remember exactly what. It was only after Jess got bit by the snake—which injected the counteractive venom into her system that she stopped forgetting, leading Slater and the other men to kill her. As such, after Frida and Sarah’s memories return in full, they realize the island is actually a trap set by Slater to lure women out and abuse them without any consequences.
What Does Red Rabbit Mean?
Although Frida’s plan to retrieve her phone and reach out to the authorities for help fails, it’s only a matter of time before hell breaks loose as the venom begins kicking in for Camilla and Heather. Once the other two abruptly remember their traumatic time on the island, Camilla and Heather instantly turn violent, seeking revenge for the abuse that Slater and his friends have put them through. This incites the resident guard to whip out his own weapons and go after the women, leading to a full-blown battle. In the midst of the same, Frida comes to a startling realization after glimpsing at some of the polaroids she had swapped from Slater’s office.
Since her arrival on the island, Frida has been having cryptic interactions with the helper lady, who only ever says two words to the woman: Red Rabbit. After Frida looks at one of the Polaroids, which features a picture of herself, but from last year, she realizes that this isn’t her first time on the island. Last year, Frida had a similar encounter with Slater—subtly referenced at the film’s start by her boss—which ended with her flying out to his private island. Much like this time, she endured gross abuse and exploitation from the billionaire but retained no memory of the event.
In fact, the only proof Frida has of that experience is a scar she has on her temple, which she acquired during her last entrapment on the island. After her last visit, Slater developed some sick fascination with her company during the day and her suffering in the night. Thus, he decided to bring her back to his island for the second time in a row. Therefore, the older lady—who has been counteracting the perfume’s effects with the venom—remembers Frida as the woman with the red rabbit painted on her nails.
Why Does Frida Save Slater? Does She Reveal the Truth About His Island?
Toward the end of the bloodbath that unfolds between Slater and the women, many of his friends end up dead, alongside Camilla and Heather. Meanwhile, Slater barricades himself inside his office with young Lucas and a nearly dead Vic. After witnessing the women’s rage, Lucas freaks out, trying to explain his own innocence since he came in contact with the perfume and lost his memories as well. Nonetheless, Slater is all too pleased to remind him that there are no innocent bystanders. Therefore, weighted down by his guilt, Lucas opens the door for Frida when she knocks on her door.
In the end, Lucas ends up dead by Frida’s bullet, and the latter ends up getting overpowered by Slater. Although Sarah tries to come for her once she realizes the other woman must be in danger, she loses her advantage after her gun’s ammunition runs out. Therefore, Slater manages to drag her into the office, bound and ready to meet her end in front of Frida. However, before he can kill her, he abruptly stops his actions—confused and disoriented. In a twist of fate, Frida managed to swap out his regular vape for the perfume while he was out hunting for Sarah. As a result, she has managed to turn the tables on him, robbing him of his memories as the cabin burns down around them.
Slater continuously tries to push the opinion that forgetting about one’s trauma is always the best way to move forward with any incident. This directly ties into his actual identity even outside of the island. At the film’s start, Slater is introduced as a public figure who had recently been “canceled” by culture for ambiguously offensive actions. For the same reason, he passed the company off to a new CEO, turning a new stone and projecting his intention to hold himself accountable and apologize for his misgivings. Although no one ever forgave him for his actions, months later, he managed to make the public consciousness forget by constantly wearing a mask of solemnity and regret.
On the island, Slater has an easier method to undo his evil actions: the perfume. Therefore, he constantly insists that forgetting is truly the best gift. However, in doing so, he’s erasing his victim’s suffering, robbing them of their autonomy, and escaping the consequences of his own actions. Ultimately, the women are the only ones who suffer. Worse yet, they can’t remember the source of their trauma to even begin working through it and healing. Therefore, in the end, Frida chooses to give Slater a taste of his own medicine, flipping the script onto her abuser.
As the cabin burns down to the ground, turning the dead bodies inside to ash, Sarah and Frida manage to escape, and the latter drags Slater out with her. After enduring so much pain and abuse at his hands, Frida intends to make him pay for his crime. However, instead of turning him over to the authorities, she has a better fate that would work out in her favor. After escaping from the island, Frida continues to keep Slater under her control by regularly dosing him with his perfume to render him as disoriented as the women on his island. Consequently, she is able to take over Slater’s empire by becoming the new CEO of Slater Tech, living out the life of power and wealth that she had always wanted. Meanwhile, he remains glued to her side, perpetually unbalanced.
Although the turn of events plays out in Frida’s favor, it’s impossible to ignore the way she has ended up on the other side of injustice herself. While subjugating her abuser hardly stains her morality, the subsequent covering up of Slater’s crimes highlights Frida’s potential for moral ambiguity. Considering she herself was an unwitting survivor of the island before her second trip, it’s highly likely that other women may have also fallen victim to Slater’s actions, only never to remember them in the aftermath. If Frida had revealed Slater for his misdeeds, she could have brought peace to his victims—including Jess. Nonetheless, she chooses to exact her revenge by turning the table and cementing herself in a position of power.
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