The Epstein Files parallels in Blink Twice are impossible to ignore: Did Zoe Kravitz expose more than we realised in her 2024 film?

When Kravitz's directorial debut, Blink Twice, arrived in 2024, it was praised as a tense psychological thriller. But as unsealed documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died by suicide in 2019, continue to surface, fans are revisiting the film with a new perspective, one that suggests Kravitz may have been telling a truth too dark for fiction.

Zoë began writing what was originally titled Pussy Island in 2017 with co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum. The story follows Frida (Naomi Ackie), a cocktail waitress invited to a tech billionaire's private island where nothing is as it seems. Channing Tatum, Kravitz's former fiancé, stars as the menacing Slater King in the film.



Released August 23, 2024, the film follows Frida and her friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) as they accept an invitation to billionaire Slater King's private paradise. The dream vacation turns nightmarish as the women discover they're being drugged with perfume made from island flowers, containing a scopolamine-like compound that erases memory and prevents them from remembering the assaults they endure.

The cast also includes Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, and Geena Davis.

The recent frenzy stems from unsealed Epstein emails showing his interest in plants with pharmacological properties.

One January 2015 email forwarded to Epstein carried the subject: "Scopolamine: Powerful drug growing in the forests of Colombia that ELIMINATES free will." Another March 2014 email showed Epstein writing, "Ask Chris about my trumpet plants at the nursery."

Trumpet plants (Brugmansia/Datura) contain scopolamine, the exact drug referenced in Blink Twice as the tool used to control victims. The parallel is too hard to ignore, as Epstein had plants producing scopolamine; Kravitz's film features a fictional island where scopolamine-like compounds from flowers enable wealthy predators to operate without consequence.





Speaking to Indiewire in August 2024, Kravitz addressed the inevitable comparisons head-on, insisting the film is "a metaphor and not so literal."

Tatum told Total Film, "I don't think I'll ever tell anybody what I had to create inside my head to play this person. He's a psychopath."

Kravitz began writing in 2017. In 2018, emails revealed Epstein questioned a victim about whether she'd spoken to a woman making a movie about sex trafficking. Epstein reportedly knew because the filmmaker, unaware who she was speaking to, revealed she'd interviewed a former sex slave from a private island.

Some theorize Kravitz was that filmmaker, and Blink Twice emerged from those encounters.

Social media has erupted with viewers drawing connections: