This Bleak Interpretation Of Blink Twice's Ending Makes The Movie Even Darker

This post contains spoilers for "Blink Twice."

I did not have particularly high expectations for Zoë Kravitz's "Blink Twice," but the longtime actress instantly proved herself as a force to be reckoned with behind the camera with her excellent new thriller. The movie's themes and messages are not subtle (check out our review here), but when a film is this stylish, I find it easy to forgive a bit of bluntness in the storytelling. And despite the movie's candy-colored production design and gorgeous island setting, things get pretty gnarly in paradise. The trigger warning in front of "Blink Twice" may have sparked a controversy, but the things that happen to the women in this movie are truly nightmarish — and that's part of the reason the movie's conclusion is so damn cathartic.

As the film comes to an end, Frida (Naomie Ackie), who is among a group of women who have been lured to this island paradise by tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) to be repeatedly raped and then drugged to make them forget about being assaulted, pulls King from a burning building, saving his life. But this isn't a "turn the other cheek" kind of movie: Frida only saved this prick because she's able to give him a taste of his own medicine by drugging Slater with his own compound and taking over his business empire, forcibly upending a system of power that's kept her subjugated and kept creeps like Slater insulated from the consequences of his actions.

It's a fist-pumping ending, but upon closer inspection, could this movie actually be darker than we originally thought?

Sarah (Adria Arjona) is initially presented as a rival to Frida on the island, but the two of them slowly begin to form a bond as the film goes on, and that bond is supercharged when they realize the truth of what's been happening to them. The movie takes pleasure in seeing these two women join forces to overthrow their captors ... which is why this alternate reading of the movie is such a gut punch.

At the end of the film, when Frida drags Slater King from that burning building, Sarah is there outside next to her. But a listener of our /Film Daily podcast wrote in suggesting that Sarah is merely a vision in this moment — that actually, Frida left Sarah to die inside so she could save Slater instead and enact her elaborate revenge plot. I need to rewatch the film to be sure, but I don't remember Sarah showing up again after that shot, so this reading seems plausible. If you subscribe to that view, the film is spitting in the face of the "girl power" solidarity it had seemingly set up, showcasing the horrifying lengths Frida is willing to go in order to take the power she believes she deserves. It would be a brutal refutation of what I initially thought the film was about, and a bleak, ruthless commentary on the dark sacrifices people sometimes must make to reach the top of the metaphorical mountain.

We spoke more about this read of "Blink Twice" at the end of today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:

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