Where Was 'Blink Twice' Filmed?

22.08.2024 - 22:11 / cntraveler.com

Would you take a free trip to Epstein island? It’s a question that Zoë Kravitz’s debut film asks and also answers: perhaps yes, if you need a vacation badly enough. But you’ll also sorely regret it. The film follows down-on-her-luck cater waiter Frida (Naomi Ackie) who, after using her credentials to sneak into the gala at which she’s meant to be pouring Champagne, meets-cute with tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum, with a name more evocative of Elon Musk—consider him a conglomerate). King is re-assimilating to society following a narrowly-skirted cancellation for vaguely defined and sexually suspicious maybe-crimes. By the end of the night, she and her friend (always bring a buddy!) have been whisked aboard a private jet replete with halfway-handsome bachelors and a few other beautiful ladies, bound for King’s private island that, presumably, sits somewhere in the Caribbean.

Vacation mode is activated as Frida, Slater, and company post up in the island’s hacienda, eat a ton of food, drink and smoke even more, and while away day after day by the pool. What happens at night is a tad less clear to viewers and to Frida at first. Vacation mode steadily malfunctions. Paradise becomes a pit. Check-in was more than easy, but check-out might prove impossible.

Slater King’s island does not, perhaps thankfully, exist in real life. The film wasn’t made on an island at all, in fact, but deep in the jungles of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula—you’ll notice no lounging is done on the beach. Mérida was production’s home base and Mexico City-based production designer Roberto Bonelli had visited the colonial city many times as a tourist, but this was his first time working there. Below, he lets us in on how the setting—namely, a bountiful boutique hotel scene and unique local flora—informed the filmmaking, as well as how he filled his few free hours.

Blink Twice, set on a private island, wasn’t made on an island at all, in fact, but deep in the jungles of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula

Can you start by telling me where this island exists, in real life?

The island is a fictitious island, which comes from a need to make it exclusive as well as geographically weird and mysterious—nobody knows where it is, and it’s difficult to escape because you can’t just leave. There’s this comment: “There are no doctors on this island.” We needed to invent it, and we went for not an island at all. In a previous draft, there were more scenes on the beach, but we turned out not to need it. We went for an existing location, a hacienda in the jungle, and we changed it so that it would not be recognizable.

It was Zoë who first suggested it, when we were scouting all over and went to the Yucatán, that we go for a place with a bit more