Blink Twice couldn’t have been any other way.

There was no version of this film that was going to be able to warn you properly in advance about what you were about to see.

content warning: GRAPHIC depictions of sexual violence, coercion and r*pe. SPOILERS.

For a film that attempts something this big, and that does not want to wander into metaphor, the turn of Act Two is actually rather restrained. One can make an argument that Zoë could have gone further. But one would be wrong! The shock and dread induced in the viewer when the entire issue comes to the fore is a testament to the style she employed - I remember lens flares in there for some reason. Something about the way she lit the scene felt very stark, and it’s that starkness that induces the dread. There are no warm rich yellows and punchy reds. There is only white, and the quiet, restrained and cold voices of the men as they do the worst; with the real, unrestrained and unedited screams of the women trying to escape. Channing Tatum takes a very tricky character and plays him pitch fucking perfect.

The moment the film scooped down into that dirt, there was either success or failure. Either Zoë brought these women out on top, or she merely would gesture to the cycle repeating and thoroughly let the film down. Thank goodness she did the former.

Because this is a revenge flick, yes, but more than anything, it’s a celluloid-printed primal scream. I felt myself wake as the women woke up. I felt violent as their survival instinct kicked in. And the catharsis didn’t feel contrived, and the whole thing felt original, because there wasn’t some naive or unknowing energy to it all - every single one of those women made the real, actual world mistake of being a little too ambitious, a little too acquiescing; allowing the social pressure to bow their decisions just a little too much.

It’s always that. And that’s always why ‘she asked for it’. Which is why Act Two needed to be, for lack of any stronger term, horrific. Because it’s the small slides that lead to the big one, but the entire slope? That wasn’t built by one decision.

That was built by whoever chartered the Jet.

There is also a melancholy to the film once it ends, even jubilant - realising that these women had been the butt of a joke for a while, forgetting the brutality, acting against their own interests without even knowing. Fawning over men that had facilitated brutality against them. And I guess if the film ever points to anything without comment, it’s that. Here. Look.

The assault is the obvious part. The joke is the soul destroyer.