Cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) cannot believe her luck when tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) whisks her away to his private island…
“You having a good time?”
Channing Tatum’s Slater King spends the movie repeating this question.
It feels like the movie - trying to thrill and unnerve you, but there is no real danger under it.
From the outset the film is discombobulating.
We are introduced to Naomi Ackie fixated on Channing Tatum, scrolling news stories about the billionaire unstated fall from grace.
Every shot is too close and edited a touch faster than it feels like it should be. The film is agitated, off-centre.
It is almost like the film is in too much of a hurry to get to the island, and set the viewer on edge.
But because every scene is shot in cut in a similar manner, the tension never has a chance to really rack up.
There is no sense of our heroine slowly realising something is wrong - particularly when every filmmaking choice is already pointing the viewer toward that.
Channing Tatum is interesting casting. Not the right casting for this role - but there is probably a world where his specific brand of earnestness would work as a misdirect.
Sadly, the role of Slater King does not have that much to it.
But the real void is Frida. We have almost no context for her - no motivation or sense of her life outside of what we see. She is obsessed with Slater King. She does not have money. She has a best friend (Alia Shawkat).
Ackie is a fine actress but the performance is reduced to a series of reactions. Who is this person? How does she feel about this situation?
And what does the film have to say about said situation?
I don’t know.
When the film starts, it feels like it is going to say something about the way our culture centres and idolises the Uber-wealthy - maybe it will even get into the gender and racial disparities between the central characters.
But the film never presents a point of view or even an angle on any of these ideas.
When we are finally given an idea of King’s debaucheries, they feel almost neutered in terms of shock value. We knew something was off with King from the beginning - give the viewer something more.
What he does is bad. He is evil. And the system that supports him is as well. But this movie is not interested in digging in.
The film does not have any deeper idea behind it, and because the central character is so undefined, the ending - in which our lead turns the tables - feels somewhat baffling.
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