Blink Twice
Oh my, is this a roman à cléf? Channing Tatum is clearly Epstein, and Geena Davis is Ghislane Maxwell. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
Our protagonist is a lowly waiter at one of those fancy Met Gala type event, with her roommate too. As she scrolls InstaTok, she finds some tech-bro posting a slickly produced apology selfie video for an unspecified transgression that happened a while back.
The bro did apologise, said he is doing therapy now, stepped back from running his company, and lives in his own private island, where “we have chickens”. Who’s “we”, motherfucker?
Apparently, at last year’s Met Gala, that tech-bro talked to our protagonist, so this time she brought rented dresses for her and the roommate, so they can mingle with the lords and try to catch his attention. Our protagonist is successful, she breaks her heel and ruins some waiter’s tray, so the gentleman bro helps her.
They mingle during the party, and as they leave, he invites her and her roommate to his island (Little St James‽), on his Gulfstream (Lolita Express‽, with adults). Their mates are some tech-sis, a random hot girl, a legit hot girl that was on the Hot Chick Survivors reality show, some twink, another bro plus a fancy cook, and Epstein’s right hand man.
As they get there Ghislane collects their phones, what happens in the island stays on the island. The help has the same fake smiles the asshole boss in the opening was telling her to maintain, but this triggers no solidarity.
The first day goes amazing, as do the rest. Something “feels” funny though, they wake up feeling refreshed, and find some weirdness in their bodies. It’s just weirdness, not enough to red flag levels. The days go by, but it’s always the same, wake up, eat breakfast, do something or nothing during the day, eat a fancy dinner, get shitfaced with psychedelics. Over and over and over again.
Like being trapped in a casino, the days go by while they lose track of the time. Just having fun, forever. The roommate is bitten by a snake, then she starts to doubt this purgatory/paradise and wants to go home. After all, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to”. Then she vanishes, and nobody else remembers her the next day.
Our protagonist still does, her name is in a lighter, searching for her is no good. She finds the old maid who recognised her before, taking care of the snakes, so she drinks snake venom and starts to remember. She even shares with the Survivor girl. Their diagnostic: getting into a plane with people they do not know.
From that point they are allies, with memory and a way to bypass the Rohypnol, they trick the rest of the girls into drinking the memory juice, and even Ghislane. But they have to pretend they are still under the influence, it’s impossible.
The showdown is inevitable. The security guy is the toughest guy to neutralise, but the Survivor girl trained for this. Ghislane was also abused, but she is part of the problem, off she goes.
Dealing with Epstein is hard. Hitting him with the Priapus statue is not enough. He requires more finesse: our protagonist hits him with the same Rohypnol. His unforced error is just greedy, he needs to catch them all.
I will interpret the ending as saying Epstein should not have been unalived by unknown parties, but I can see how it undermines the whole ethos about cooperation versus competition. The priority should not be on gloating over the former corrupt puppet-masters, nor to become one yourself. That’s what I would think is the weakest link.
Naomi Ackie of Mickey 17 can handle protagonist duties, Aria Arjona is a tough but hot chick, but Channing Tatum and Christian Slater are not so scary or disgusting. The antagonists are squeaky fucking clean, they lack sleaze. I know that’s the “point”, hiding in plain sight, but it softens the blow.
When our protagonist chides the roommate, that she “made it” so keep your doubts to yourself, it would be extremely powerful to make the antagonists closer to Harvey Weinstein, to accentuate the desperation.
The other minor antagonists are Haley Joel Osmond of The Sixth Sense, and the dude from Scary Movie 3 and Red Rocket. Let’s hope they are never cancelled.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.