I watched Blink Twice recently, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Not because it’s a thriller with some clever twist ending, but because it felt like staring into the abyss of something real—something raw and all too familiar.
Here’s what happens.
Frida, a cocktail waitress played by Naomi Ackie, is invited by tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) to a private island, along with a group of other women. At first, it feels like a dream: unlimited champagne, no phones, and promises of pleasure and freedom. But when her friend Jess suddenly goes missing, Frida is the only one who remembers she existed at all.
The others look at her blankly. “Who’s Jess?”
The reason? A mysterious perfume derived from a rare island flower—designed to make the women forget. Forget who they came with. Forget what happened the night before. Forget that they were assaulted. That they were restrained. That they were used.
The perfume works like magic, but it’s not really sci-fi. It’s symbolic. Because we live in a world that does this already—gaslights, erases, rewrites, and rationalises violence against women every single day.
The most disturbing part? It’s Channing Tatum.
Slater King isn’t some cartoon villain. He’s charming. Handsome. Magnetic. And that’s what makes it so much more terrifying. We don’t want to believe someone that attractive, that charismatic, that wealthy could do something so vile. That’s exactly how he gets away with it.
We’re taught to be wary of “strangers in the dark,” but Blink Twice shows you the real danger: the man with a perfect smile and a private jet. The one who makes you feel special before drugging you. The one who tells himself it’s fine—because you won’t remember.
That line—they won’t remember—echoes through the film like a threat dressed as comfort. It heightens the horror because it removes accountability. If memory can be erased, then so can guilt. It’s a perverse fantasy of total control: do what you like, they won’t even know it happened.
And this isn’t just a fictional nightmare. It echoes something far more harrowing: the Pelicot trial.
In France, a woman discovered her husband had been secretly drugging her for years and filming strangers raping her in their marital bed. She didn’t remember. She had no idea. Her body became a site of abuse while her mind was kept silent. The justification? She was unconscious. She wouldn’t remember.
It’s horrifying. And it’s real.
Blink Twice isn’t just a warning—it’s a mirror. It shows what happens when power, wealth, and charm are used not to uplift but to destroy. When tech is used not for progress but for manipulation. When men believe that harm doesn’t count if the woman can’t recall it.
At Femme Tech, we celebrate the power of innovation—but we also call out the dark underbelly of tech. Memory-erasing substances might feel like science fiction, but what they represent—gaslighting, consent violations, silence—is something we already know too well.
Slater King laughs, drugs, and reassures the others:
“She won’t remember.”
And for a while, they don’t.
But we do.
And we must.
