The message “Eat the Rich” is not subtle. Flash twicethe horror thriller that tops the list of hyphens for actress-producer-writer-model Zoë Kravitz (The Batman, Kimi). This is the kind of movie where people speak in expository speeches or let silent tears and drawn knives do the talking. Its statements about gender, violence, trauma and entitlement are blatant and blatant, with little room for ambiguity or interpretation. And that absolutely seems to be the main point of the film.
Flash twice is a story designed to make people angry and then give them a focus for their anger. Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum aim to provoke recognition and righteous anger, and they don’t hold back much in the process. But they’re working in a style that’s become so familiar from other recent films that it’s difficult for Kravitz and Feigenbaum to find their own distinctive style.
Image: Amazon MGM Studios / Everett Collection
Actress Naomi Ackie is their main weapon in this war. Ackie plays Frida, a wage slave at a catering company who must choose between paying the rent or hitting on her unexpected crush, ultra-rich tech mogul Slater King (Channing Tatum), and delivers a convincing, engaging lead performance. Recently embroiled in a scandal, Slater is on a standard media-assisted image rehabilitation tour that includes public apologies, promises that “I’m working on myself” and a few jealous references to his return to nature on his private island, where he grows his own crops and raises his own chickens.
He also parties extensively with his inner circle. Frida manages to attract Slater’s appreciative attention while she was supposed to be working at his company’s glamorous annual gala, and soon she and her roommate and best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) are on a luxurious private plane to this private island. They are accompanied by a handful of Slater’s own best friends, mostly played by familiar faces – Christian Slater and Haley Joel Osment as two of his work colleagues; Kyle MacLachlan as his therapist; Geena Davis as his eager assistant. And then there are the other women on board, Hot Survivor Babes Champion Sarah (Adria Arjona) and the giggling party girls Camilla (Liz Caribel) and Heather (Trew Mullen).
Once they arrive on the island, champagne, marijuana, and designer drugs flow freely, between gourmet meals, daily pool parties, and hedonistic lounging. Except… while Frida tries to signal her interest in a date with Slater, and Sarah continues to scowl and compete, as if she wants him for herself, the nights fly by and sex never comes into play.
Image: Amazon MGM Studios / Everett Collection
But there’s more to it than that. Frida’s housekeeper is acting strangely. Poisonous snakes keep appearing. Frida doesn’t know why she keeps getting clumps of dirt under her animal-themed fingernails. Something is very wrong, Jess suspects, and they don’t know what. The answer is so grim that Amazon MGM Studios has issued an official trigger warning because they don’t want to surprise audiences.
Approaching Flash twice as a big-twist movie will only disappoint viewers: the big twist is pretty obvious, heavily implied, and isn’t really the point. It’s about what women do in a situation where men seem to have status, power, and influence – and why so many men throughout history have used those things in such predictable ways.
It’s surely no coincidence that most of Slater’s tech-bro friends are white-looking rich guys, while Frida and the other women are all lower class, women of color, or both. The power inequality of class, gender, and race is portrayed throughout. Flash twice in the vibrant reds and bold black-and-white tones that also define Slater King’s decorative aesthetic at this annual company gala.
And yet the film approaches these things with neither nuance nor careful craftsmanship. The setup certainly has potential, but Kravitz and Feigenbaum work in the shadow of many similar recent films, including The menu, Triangle of sadness, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Storyand the catastrophically mistreated Don’t worry, darling. As in all these films, Flash twice revels in the privileged, glamorous lives of the super-rich, then indulges in the fantasy of interrupting those lives with well-justified violence. But in an era of ever-growing wealth inequality, where about one in three thriller villains is some kind of tech bro, it takes more than a simple message like “men are evil, wealth is evil, power corrupts” to make a film stand out.
Image: Amazon MGM Studios / Everett Collection
Kravitz and Feigenbaum go far with striking imagery and style, tapping into relatable frustrations. Frida and Jess’s situation is entirely understandable: they just want to escape their worries about rent, their sleazy boss, and their dead-end jobs for a while. The entire engine of the film is anger at how easily these things fall into the hands of certain smug, self-righteous, self-indulgent men, while women (and women of color in particular) have to pay a high price to achieve the same goals. Tatum’s amused, warm charisma, contrasted with Ackie’s convincing outburst of emotion about the situation she finds herself in, gives that anger a focus and a face.
But it doesn’t add much depth to the whole thing. In the last 10 minutes or so, Flash twice suddenly comes into focus, with a too-brief moment of clarity and creativity that stands out from all the similar films of recent years. Suddenly it feels like the film has a more specific point of view and a much sharper and more incisive edge. If this kind of intention and specificity were to extend over a longer period of the film, Flash twice would be a real conversation piece. As it stands, it’s just the latest film to tell a familiar story about men versus women, haves versus have-nots, and how cathartic it can be to imagine a bloody answer to societal problems that rarely come within knife reach.
Flash twice is now in theaters.
