David Farnor | On 28, Sep 2024

Director: Zoë Kravitz
Cast: Channing Tatum, Naomi Ackie, Alia Shawkat, Christian Slater, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment
Certificate: 15

“Are you having a good time?” That’s the question tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) asks Frida (Naomi Ackie) as she enjoys a luxurious trip to his private island. It’s when we realise that he’s asked that question several times before that it starts to get really creepy.

Frida, when we meet her, is a cocktail waitress who is living from one gig to the next with her best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat). After she accidentally breaks a valuable object at an event and attracts Slater’s attention, he woos, wines, dines and charms her. Channing Tatum is on superbly charismatic form here, casually swaggering about with a wealthy confidence, while dropping notes of vulnerability – including introducing Frida to his therapist – that make him just relatable enough to be irresistible.

Once on his island, Frida and Jess find a host of other woman also on retreat, doing designer drugs, wearing white dresses and permanently lounging by a swimming pool, each one blissfully free of any past traumas or worries. But, of course, there’s trouble in paradise, and the fun lies in finding out what exactly is going on and why. The script, by Zoë Kravitz and ET Feigenbaum, will be compared by many to Get Out, but it’s a far better companion to Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling: bubbling underneath the seemingly perfect surface is a searing evisceration of gender politics, abuse of authority, exploitation and cancel culture. What begins as a serene romantic comedy descends into something pricklier and darker that explores the importance of speaking out about truth and acknowledging past sins, and the role that genuine allies play in both.

If the movie doesn’t quite dig into the questions its raises with as much as depth as you’d like, it makes up for that with a nerve-racking pace and a note-perfect cast. Alongside Tatum are Christian Slater and Haley Joel Osment as men who are plain-faced and brazen in their cruelty and selfishness. Among the women, Adria Arjona steals scenes as a reality TV star who understands more than most the value of performance and perception. At the film’s heart, though, are Alia Shawkat and Naomi Ackie, whose friendship is immediately convincing. Ackie, in particular, is sensational, selling her fascination with the alluring Slater as well as her wide-eyed horror when things aren’t what she hoped – and her fiery determination to upend the scales of power.

Zoë Kravitz holds all these threads together with sumptuous composition, a chilling use of sound and a lean knack for generating suspense. The brutality, when it occurs, is brief but all the more disturbing for it, as the unsettling roller coaster barrels along. Are you having a good time? Often the opposite, but you won’t be able to look away.

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