Blink Twice and the problem with #MeToo thrillers

Blink Twice – which I keep accidentally referring to as Don’t Blink Twice, so often does it recall Olivia Wilde’s 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling – has been heralded as the latest of so-called #MeToo thrillers and, unusually for a theatrical release, comes accompanied with a trigger warning for sexual violence. So the film’s bleak trajectory isn’t really a surprise. Still, the pulling back of the curtain here feels particularly anticlimactic, if stomach-churning, given the territory by similarly flashy #MeToo movies before it, namely Don’t Worry Darling and Emerald Fennell’s Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman, which seek to provoke, and garner accolades, through the supposedly transgressive act of portraying the worst possible scenario for its female characters.