Overview: When tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) meets cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi 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.

Verdict: “I forgot to remember to forget,” sang Elvis Presley in 1955, and similar mental gymnastics are required to figure out what’s actually happening — or has been happening — in this upscale twisty-turny horror thriller. But although it raises serious and intriguing questions about hot-button issues and features a top-notch cast that couldn’t possibly be bettered, Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut winds up leaving us to ponder more moral conundrums than it can properly answer in the format of high-end genre film.

The premise is a very good and timely one (think of a female-fronted Get Out), but the script doesn’t exactly follow suit, taking the well-trodden M. Night Shyamalan route to its big reveal.

One of its plus points is the casting of the excellent Naomi Ackie as Frida, a stoic but dispirited gig-economy hospitality worker (is there any other kind?) who spends her evenings doom-scrolling on her mobile and wondering how to make the rent. Her gloom lifts somewhat at the news that millionaire tech bro Slater King (Channing Tatum) is going to be at one of her events, to the extent that she is warned not to be as forward with the talent as she has been in the past.

Frida is not perturbed, even though she has seen his Reels confession on Instagram, apologizing for his “regrettable behavior”. What this ever actually entailed will be left to the viewer’s imagination, but we do learn that King has decided to step down as CEO and spend time thinking about what he did while serving penance on his private luxury island. “I have chickens,” he offers as proof.

Frida has a soft spot for Slate, but she also seems to be a magnet for men with fragile egos, as her needle-sharp best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) tries to tell her: “You’re not a human phone charger,” she snaps. “Have some self-respect.” Both women, however, get giddy in the company of Slater King, and matters accelerate when Frida snaps a high heel, bringing her to his attention.

There’s a cute Cinderella moment, and suddenly the pair are deep in conversation, even after the event has obviously ended. King has to return to his island paradise, but at the last minute he circles back to Frida. “Do you guys wanna come?”

This question is perhaps the essence of Blink Twice; that spur-of-the-moment decision that can go any which way. Being broke, and flattered, they do wanna go, and their introduction to the high life — along with three other similarly random women plucked to balance out King’s inner circle of men — is more than they could have imagined.

Time stops. Every day is a holiday, with endless refills of champagne, gourmet dinners, and psychedelic drugs on tap. Jess is cautious. “Don’t you think it’s weird?” she wonders. “I don’t think it’s weird,” says Frida. “I think it’s… rich.” Soon, however, the novelty wears off, and when Jess disappears, Frida wakes up to danger she might have put herself in.