Zoë Kravitz’s unsettling directorial debut, featuring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum, offers a chilling exploration of darkness.

The naive but bold Frida and best friend Jess are working dead end jobs as cater waiters when Frida makes an audacious move: get high end dresses for herself and Jess and sneak into a gala being held by the reclusive billionaire, Slater King.  There the girls have a blast hobnobbing with the rich and famous when Frida gets the attention of Slater, who she has a huge crush on.

Slater seems just as taken with Frida as she is with him, rescuing her when she hurts herself in a very Prince Charming move, and invites her and Jess to join him and his friends on his private island for the weekend.

And that’s when things get…weird.


Zoë Kravitz, much like Jordan Peele and Dev Patel before her, absolutely swings for the fences in her directorial debut. The result is one of the most unsettling films I’ve ever sat through. As I said to my mother as we were watching, at only 15 minutes in I was so tense because I knew something was going to happen, I just didn’t know what. Kravitz does a fantastic job of layering everything with a sense of offness throughout the film. Whether it’s someone being just out of focus in the periphery of each scene; the way a character’s eyes linger just a little too long to be normal on someone or something; a lighter always ending up somewhere or with someone it shouldn’t be. Each moment, separately, is not a big deal but, together, they add up to the feeling that something about either Slater, his island, or both is wrong.

Following the delightfully unpleasant trend set by horror films like Midsommar almost the entire film happens in broad daylight. If anything that adds to the unease as we get shots from cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra showing us the immensity of Slater’s compound and, more importantly for the folx visiting, the isolation of the island itself. Everything is in service of the point Kravitz is making: if you or your friends are getting bad vibes, listen. If you notice something is off, pay attention. It could be the literal difference between life and death.

All of this would just be beautiful, yet disturbing, scenery if it wasn’t anchored by performances and leads Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum are one hundred percent up for the challenge. Ackie, who some may be familiar with from Rise of Skywalker  or her work on the West End, is utterly mesmerizing, vulnerable and brave as Frida. She brings so many layers to her performance that at no point can you stop looking at her. She is captivating and you can see why Slater becomes obsessed with her as the film progresses.


Speaking of Slater, Channing Tatum absolutely deserves a best actor nomination for his performance. Charming, hurt, kind and brutal, Slater King is a walking contradiction, a man so scarred by the horrible things that happened to him as a child, who wants to be a better person but refuses to do the work, instead taking shortcuts to healing that do nothing to fix the wounds in his soul. There are multiple moments where you want him to be better than he is, where you actively root for him, despite knowing what an utter mess he is and that is absolutely thanks to Tatum’s performance and the excellent script by Kravitz and E.T. Feigenbaum.

Across the board there is no weak link in the cast with everyone bringing their A game but special shout out must be made to Adria Arjona whose hypercompetence comes into play at pivotal moments throughout the film; and Haley Joel Osment who works against our preconceptions of him wonderfully. Then there are the three G.O.A.T.s of this film: the incomparable Geena Davis, Christian Slater (who has to have a portrait in an attic somewhere because my gawd that man is still the finest mofo onscreen, even standing beside Tatum) and my beloved Kyle MacLachlan who has very little screen time yet absolutely does the most with what he’s given.


Overall this film was a deep dive into darkness that is so very, unwaveringly real that it will probably give me nightmares for months.

5 Huge Blunts out of 5

I tried to help you.

Thank you to Allied and Amazon MGM Studios for the Advanced Screening