Blink Twice (in theaters) 

Is “Blink Twice” a chillingly effective horror movie? Absolutely. Is it incisive commentary? Only sometimes. 

The directorial debut of actress Zoë Kravitz, “Blink Twice” does an excellent, terrifying job slowly revealing the rot beneath what looks like an island paradise. Though obviously inspired by other horror films, the movie puts its own, confident spin on the tropes of evil hidden under smiles and not being able to trust your own memory. There are flashes of more, here, about how women are treated by society and the hollow nature of celebrity atonement, but the movie is more interested in the ambiance than it is digging into any of the themes it suggests. 

In some ways, though, that ambiance helps increase the scare factor. There’s a lot of gloss to the movie, from the gala party and the gorgeous tropical island to Channing Tatum’s always camera-ready smile, and if you’re not careful it can lure you in. There are all the tropes here of a glamorous romance, including Tatum himself, and if you’re only looking at the surface of the movie there’s a chance you might even forget the genre. It puts you right next to Naomi Ackie’s Frida, so caught up in the glow that the shadows seem all the darker when they arrive. 

Ackie is the person the audience holds onto throughout all this, grounding the movie even as she threatens to get caught up in it. Adria Arjona is just as excellent, a jealous reality TV star who is also more than she seems, and her and Ackie’s team up in the latter part of the film is an absolute treat. Tatum is excellent at putting a knife blade beneath his smile, just as picture-perfect as ever but all the more frightening because of it. 

The ending to all of this is just as dramatic and horrible as you could hope for. It’s just not quite as deep as it could have been. 

Grade: Three stars

Daughters (Netflix) 

“Daughters” is heartbreaking to watch, but not nearly as much as it must be to experience.

An award-winner at Sundance, the documentary focuses on a special daddy-daughter dance where incarcerated fathers get to spend in-person time with their daughters for the first time in years. Though the fathers undergo a 10-week parenting program in order to participate, the real focus here is on the complicated feelings of the daughters who are involved. When a father goes to jail, so does the entire family. 

Directed by Angela Patton and music video director Natalie Rae, the documentary avoids dwelling too much on data or the program’s backstory. Though the few statistics are powerful – 95 percent of the men who participate in the program don’t return to prison after they’ve been released – the story is mostly told in relationships. Younger daughters eager to see their fathers again are side by side with older girls who have spent most of their lives without a parent. Their emotions, along with their fathers’, radiate off the screen and offer a far more gut-wrenching view than any amount of data could. 

The documentary was filmed over the course of years, letting audiences see a painful, powerful stretch of these people’s lives. There’s not really a clear end, but there isn’t with life, either. 

Grade: Four stars

Jenniffer Wardell is an award-winning movie critic and member of the Utah Film Critics Association. Find her on Twitter at @wardellwriter or drop her a line at [email protected].