The Menu, Blink Twice, and the Get Outification of Horror

When micro-agressing your protagonist goes mainstream

We’re living in a post-Get Out world and might be worse off. Jordan Peele’s debut horror masterpiece unquestionably revolutionised its genre. Haunting visuals and cutting social commentary ushered horror into a new era; deploying the conventions of the genre to explore the unique social perspective of the marginalised. While we are in, debatably, a Cambrian explosion of Peelian horror, I find myself frustrated at a resistance to the innovation that defines Peele’s films. The emergence of cinema that settles for visual intrigue over nuanced, thought-provoking storytelling, elevated by the filmmaker’s understanding of visual language is, at once, heartbreaking and expected. Zoë Kratiz’s Blink Twice recently elicited a familiar frustrated sigh during the credit roll. It is, by no means, a “bad film”, but a film with heaps of unrealised potential. It’s burdened by an inability to harmoniously integrate its themes into its storytelling and bring them to satisfying conclusions. Such has been the MO of post-Get Out horror filmmaking for long enough that comparisons to Mark Mylod’s “The Menu” could be heard, readily, in the din of an emptying cinema. I can assure my fellow theater patrons that Blink Twice is, indeed, a lot like The Menu and that fact brings me no joy.

Visually, both The Menu and Blink Twice are, in my view, successful. Each engages audiences with interesting visual ideas that support their tonal and thematic framework. The decision to employ David Gelb and the distinctive aesthetic he brought to Netflix’s Chef’s Table was both clever visual association and an effective comment on the perception of fine dining. The film’s division into “courses”, frames our experience akin to the Hawthorn’s diners’. The sharp visual language also punctuates an argument about the, somewhat arbitrary, definition of fine cuisine when “Tyler’s Bullshit” is rendered in Gelb’s crisp style. Outside of those moments, Mylod’s camera weaves deftly between patrons of the Hawthorn, seamlessly ferrying the audience from table to table. During these scenes, we are treated to a whodunnit cast of characters each guilty, in their own way. Blink Twice, similarly, possesses an arresting visual centrepiece: flash photography. The sudden and fleeting sensation of flashbulb memories is conveyed effortlessly through Kravitz’s decision here. Even its title is slickly contained in one such camera flash. Kravitz opts for tight shots with a focus on faces and expressions, a solid choice to elicit empathy. Blink Twice’s use of colour is also striking. The ubiquity of yellow, alluding to the everpresent island snake and, ergo, the potential to reveal repressed memories of its traumatised women, is a particularly eye-catching choice. Jess’ lighter is also an interesting visual metaphor for the covert theft of women’s agency, and, cleverly, establishes a narrative throughline that signals to Frida an unsettling truth. While these films’ decisions are powerful, they lack the appropriate narrative context to enforce the full gravity of their emotional impact. 

For all its visual intrigue, The Menu is straightforward. There are major twists and revelations but, it is, at its core a film about the pleasures of making art. More specifically, The Menu is a film about the fulfillment of serving others through artistic expression. Julian Slowik has assembled a rogues’ gallery of representatives of various facets of the (often capitalist) interests that have destroyed his artistic integrity. It’s a fairly direct critique. The Menu, however, stumbles as it introduces other arguments into its narrative. The first major pain point is the revelation that Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy’s character and protagonist) isn’t Tyler’s partner, but an escort. Margot and Slowik are parallels. They’re both “providers of experiences”. The complication of this view is in the nature of the services they provide. The Menu never attempts to grapple with the fraught implication that sex work is as consensual as chef work. It functions in some regards: both require service to ungrateful clientele, both involve the commodification of time and body, and both can place their purveyors in value-compromising positions. Yet, sex work and cooking (particularly when done by a woman and man respectively) have wildly different degrees of danger, societal acceptance, and freedom. This is doubly concerning given The Menu’s prominent feminist themes (also largely under-explored). A more nuanced analysis would interrogate this parallel to reach a novel endpoint about the nature of service work. The film opts merely to conclude that Slowik is also guilty of perpetuating the systems he abhors. Through Margot’s callout of the pretensions of his cooking, she forces Slowik to recon with his role in a patron’s dissatisfaction and, by extension, his own. It is a worthy final act in its own right, but not the sort of nuanced exploration that leaves audiences thinking differently, about the intersections of capitalism, misogyny, and service.

My uncertainty about Blink Twice begins with its narrative structure. It’s perfectly serviceable in as much as internal consistency is concerned but lacks the tight decision-making required of social impact horror. Much of the thriller’s runtime is spent establishing relationships and dropping the odd bits of information critical to the central conflict. It’s a film concerned with Frida’s mounting unease. Our protagonist is increasingly concerned with leaving the island, understanding what day it is, and, eventually, what happened to Jess. As it becomes clear that their vacation is not what it seems, the film feels uncertain as it meanders to a conclusion. Much of its length is wasted on establishing the tone of the island, yet is unconcerned with ensuring that it reaches meaningful iterations of its characters and thesis. It’s no secret that the film is an allegory for the conditions surrounding sexual assault and its aftermath. The treatment and feelings of victims (particularly women) and men who abuse their power are the focal points of Kravitz’s narrative. Yet the film, in its final acts, never advances its thesis about the relationship between society, women, and abusers. It is satisfied, purely, with observations made countless times prior. More frustratingly, the film advances a secondary argument about the relationship between the abused and memory. Frida, earlier in the film, posits that; given that trauma occurs, it’s best that the traumatised have no recollection of it, responsively to Slater King’s mention he’s uncovering repressed memories of his own. This position is more contextually sinister when, during Blink Twice’s climax, King opines that forgetting is a blessing, and women are much better at it. Accompanying the revelation that King and his sister were abused, it’s a striking change of tact. Yet the film never facilitates a conclusion about these notions. Is there truth in King’s belief about memory? Has Frida reversed her stance: memory (in all its forms) is critical to one’s identity? What additional harm is done to victims of abuse by denying them the very memory of their trauma? Blink Twice is uninterested in these questions which begs another: why include a heavy emphasis on the value of memory at all?    

Both The Menu and Blink Twice are Get Out, or at least they’re trying to be. They’re horror, focused on social impact, utilising genre conventions to hit the audience with revelations about society and the treatment of the marginalised. They can only exist in a world that’s accepted a film like Get Out. Yet these films forget that the critical and commercial success of Peele’s film wasn’t predicated solely on clever visuals and timely social commentary. Get Out’s biggest strength is the seamless marriage of these aspects, culminating in a thorough and stimulating conclusion. The films in its wake ring comparatively hollow. There’s no sense that every element they contain is working towards a specific and nuanced set of arguments. The result is a pair of films that feel unfocused, noteworthy, confused, enthusiastic, glib, stylish, inconclusive, earnest, trite, funny, and disappointing. Get Out is succinct and better for it.