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Contains spoilers for Blink Twice
If you were armed with the knowledge that Zoë Kravitz confident directorial debut was originally going to be called ‘Pussy Island’ then you might have had a sense of where this paradise-turned-nightmare tale was going to go. But could you have predicted that ending?
This is the story of best friends Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Ali Shawkat) who are strapped for cash, working as silver service waitresses for a horrible boss and unsure where their lives will lead them.
Then there’s Slater King (Channing Tatum) the handsome billionaire who, after he had committed some unspecified infraction and issued a public apology, has taken time away from the public eye to work on himself by BUYING AN ISLAND. Yep, he now has his own island where he does yoga and keeps chickens.
At a gala event for King, Frida and Jess are working, but aided by some fabulous dresses and a bit of ingenuity they sneak into the gala as guests, meet the infamous King, who Frida has a massive crush on, and get to party with his inner circle. After a night of luxurious partying the girls are invited to join him and his friends on his island. Who could refuse?
The women on the island: Frida, Jess, Sarah (Adria Arjona), Camilla (Liz Caribel) and Heather (Trew Mullen), are given beautiful rooms, identical sets of white outfits and a perfume called desideria (the word means ‘desire’ or ‘longing’) derived from the giant purple flowers that are to be found everywhere on the island. The days are filled with drink, drugs, sunbathing and swimming, fine food, endless champagne and debauchery. But something is up, bits of time are missing, and why is there dirt under Frida’s nails?
What’s really going on on the island?
This is, indeed, Pussy Island. The women have been lured there by King for the pleasure of his male guests. At night the men rape and abuse the women but because of the desideria, which is basically a very powerful date rape drug which causes amnesia, by morning the woman just don’t remember. The days on the island are deliberately hazy, and all very much the same and the women lose all sense of time – they have no idea what day it is so don’t notice that swathes of time are going missing.
That doesn’t just include Jess and Frida – Frida learns that the other women really didn’t know King or the other men at all. Sarah, who is ostensibly with the absolutely awful Cody (Simon Rex) tells Frida he just chatted her up in a coffee shop.
What’s with the gift bags?
When Kyle McLachan’s sleazy therapist Rich pays a flying visit to the island that every guest leaves with a red gift bag containing the perfume. We have seen earlier Geena Davis’ as King’s assistant, struggling with vast numbers of these red bags and later we see a room full of them. Later Frida discovers polaroids (Christian Slater’s Vic snaps these throughout the film) featuring different women, and blokes with red gift bags. This isn’t a closed circle – King is inviting male guests to the island to rape women on a regular basis.
And why the gift bag? Perhaps the subtext is that these men will use the perfume when they are back from the island too.
What’s with the snake lady?
The island is full of snakes and King has hired a strange older lady to get rid of them. But she is a force for the good, she has been extracting the venom from the snakes because she has worked out that the venom is an antidote to the effects of the desideria. Her memory is in tact and she tries to help Frida by tricking her into drinking the venom.
Earlier Jess had been bitten by a snake and the venom had caused her to regain her memory – she tries to talk Frida into leaving the island. As Frida’s memory gradually returns she begins to have flashbacks of Jess in distress, stealing Cody’s special knife and telling Frida to hide it. Later she has the full memory of Jess being murdered by King because the venom would make her remember.
Frida gets Sarah to drink the venom, after she manages to make her believe that Jess existed (Sarah had forgotten her entirely but the lighter with Jess’s name on it convinces her) then the two trick Camilla and Heather into taking it as shots with tequila.
Red Rabbit
The snake lady says Red Rabbit to Frida. It’s not clear what that means until a later revelation. It refers to her finger nails. Frida paints her nails with animals: “anailmals” she calls them. On the island she is wearing blue cat nails. But the snake lady has seen her wearing red rabbit nails…
We discover that Frida has been to this island before and doesn’t remember a thing about it. We learn that the scar by her eye, that King asked her about earlier, was actually caused by him – he is taunting her. Could the lipstick we saw in the drawer earlier actually have been hers? This establishes how powerful the amnesia drug the desideria is.
What’s the deal with Lucas
Lucas, played by Levon Hawke (son of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, brother of Maya Hawke) is the young foppish guy on the island. He’s been drugged too and doesn’t remember what he did.
“You did nothing” King tells him “nothing for yourself but nothing for them either.” He’s berating Lucas for his inaction but there’s probably a darker truth here. Why keep him around if he does nothing and has to be drugged to forget what the others did? We think it’s probable he was a victim too, certainly it’s likely some of the awful men King brings to the island might prefer an attractive young man to any of the women anyway.
Frida King
After the final showdown, which paid off of plenty of foreshadowing – Camilla says she’d go all out for her girlfriends and the minute she remembers what’s happened she does exactly that, Sarah puts a corkscrew through the hand of Cody who constantly annoyed her by trying to make her smell corks etc, smug Vic gets beaten with the chess board by Heather etc. – only Sarah, Frida and King survive. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” says Sarah.
What she’s chosen is to take King’s empire. At another King foundation gala Slater is there but visibly confused when Rich approaches him. This gala is to honor the head of the King foundation – and it’s Frida King – she’s married Slater and he can’t remember a thing: she’s used the desideria on him. His memory of all of it is gone and his motor functions are impaired. Frida encourages him to eat his steak (when he had previously pointed out to her that he doesn’t eat red meat). She has taken his money, power and status.
Let’s unpack that a bit. This is a young Black woman who has, with other young women, been systematically raped and abused by rich White men. She has had to wait on these men, been told to be invisible by these men and has been powerless at their hands. Her best friend has been killed by these men. So why not get justice for Jess and report them to the police?
In this world, where an armed ex-military man is on hand on the island at all times, knows exactly what is going on and thinks absolutely nothing of executing these women, it’s unlikely Frida would have any faith in the police. In this world, money is power, and by taking Slater’s money, status and memory and by letting Rich know she remembers exactly who he is and what he did, she has the power. She’s free to torture poor pathetic Slater as much as she wants. This might not be justice, but it is at least revenge.
Blink Twice is in cinemas now.
The post Blink Twice Ending Explained: Red Rabbit, Gift Bags and That Final Scene appeared first on Den of Geek.
