During the COVD-19 pandemic, tech worker Angela Childs (Zoe Kravitz) works for the Amygdala Corporation refining command streams for their virtual assistant KIMI with the primary selling point differentiating it from SIRI or Alexa being it's continuous review by human support staff so it can be refined and upgraded. Angela works from home having suffered from agoraphobia following an assault some years back, but maintains with her neighbor Terry Hughes (Byron Bowers) with the two having formed a romantic relationship during the COVD lockdown. During Angela's review of KIMI commands she comes across a command stream which has seemingly recorded what sounds like a murder of a woman (Erika Christensen). As Angela digs deeper into the stream she's met with resistance from Amygdala's corporate bureaucracy who worry about tainting their going public with a scandal and must now try to overcome her trauma to find who was killed and why.
KIMI marks the latest film from versatile director Steven Soderbergh and the latest original film for HBO Max following Soderbergh's previous efforts Let Them All Talk and No Sudden Move. Written and produced by noted screenwriter David Koepp, Koepp is in familiar territory having collaborated with David Fincher in 2002 on the home invasion thriller Panic Room that despite its familiar trappings won over critics and audiences with its directorial style and performances. While the movie takes a well-trodden format inspired by Hitchcock's Rear Window, Koepp gives the material a fresh spin that reminded me of the early 2000s Larry Cohen thrillers like Phone Booth and Cellular that took the emerging cell phone technology of the time and applied it to classic thriller tropes. What Larry Cohen did for Cell Phones, David Koepp does for the era of Alexa and Google Asssitant and I was honestly pretty engaged from start to finish.
Zoe Kravits is terrific in the role of Angela and much of the time, especially in the first hour, Angela is the only character we see directly as she interacts through the world primarily through text messaging, video conferencing, and phone calls. Kravitz does a good job of conveying a person who's suffered a past trauma and walled herself off in favor of a techological barrier that allows her to survive and work in the 21st Century, and the movie gives her a solid arc in her "Hedgehog's Dilemma" where's she's protected and fortified herself but has to learn to put down defenses and trust people and the world again. Kravitz and Byron Bowers have solid chemistry in their relationship and you feel Bowers frusturation with trying to be understanding of Angela's trauma while also trying to convince her to come outside her apartment with him. In addition to Bowers, the movie also features a solid supporting cast who appear throughout including David Wain, Andy Daly, Jacob Vargas, and a host of others who help sell the scenario put on screen.
Soderbergh does a great job crafting a modern day thriller whilst utilizing classic thriller tropes that can be traced to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Donen. While the movie does fall under the umbrella of "Covid films" we've seen with the likes of higher end (relatively speaking) films like Songbird or Locked Down to direct-to-video schlock like The Covid Killer or Corona: Fear Is a Virus, KIMI is the first one I feel actually works for the type of movie it's trying to be. Many of those movies mentioned even Songbird or Locked Down which had the resources of Michael Bay and Steven Knight often felt like rushed "strike while the Iron's hot" films designed to catch people with a timely premise and little else substantiating it. Soderbergh and Koepp feel like they utilize the Covid pandemic to tell a story and examine its impact upon a character, but it never feels like its timeliness is being used as a gimmick. Soderbergh brings his usually visual flair to the proceedings as he uses Steadicam when we're inside Angela's apartment, but once we're outside with Angela the filmmaking uses a handheld camera and a number of tilted shots to give a good visual sense of the tension and unease felt by Angela making for great visual storytelling. Koepp's script keeps a solid pace throughout its brisk 89 minute runtime, but you feel like you get to know the characters and the mystery quite well as we're very much placed in Angela's shoes. Admittedly the movie loses some of its tension after the hour mark when everything is "laid out" but that only means it goes from being great to being good, and even if the stuff in the last third pales in comparison to the first hour, it gives a deliciously entertaining pay-off to Angela's arc with some dark as black humor in how she utilizes the Kimi. Koepp's script is also a much less pessimistic and misanthropic take on the material than I've seen with other films that attempt this kind of thing. One standout sequence I loved was when two nameless thugs in a van try to kidnap Angela and some nearby homeless rights protestors block the van from escaping and pull her out of the van and help her to safety.
KIMI takes conventional thriller trappings and applies it to our modern day world without feeling like "headlinesploitation". With a solid script, great direction, and a fantastic performance by Zoe Kravitz, Soderbergh continues to show his strength as a versatile director taking what could've been an average thriller and elevating it with his style.
KIMI marks the latest film from versatile director Steven Soderbergh and the latest original film for HBO Max following Soderbergh's previous efforts Let Them All Talk and No Sudden Move. Written and produced by noted screenwriter David Koepp, Koepp is in familiar territory having collaborated with David Fincher in 2002 on the home invasion thriller Panic Room that despite its familiar trappings won over critics and audiences with its directorial style and performances. While the movie takes a well-trodden format inspired by Hitchcock's Rear Window, Koepp gives the material a fresh spin that reminded me of the early 2000s Larry Cohen thrillers like Phone Booth and Cellular that took the emerging cell phone technology of the time and applied it to classic thriller tropes. What Larry Cohen did for Cell Phones, David Koepp does for the era of Alexa and Google Asssitant and I was honestly pretty engaged from start to finish.
Zoe Kravits is terrific in the role of Angela and much of the time, especially in the first hour, Angela is the only character we see directly as she interacts through the world primarily through text messaging, video conferencing, and phone calls. Kravitz does a good job of conveying a person who's suffered a past trauma and walled herself off in favor of a techological barrier that allows her to survive and work in the 21st Century, and the movie gives her a solid arc in her "Hedgehog's Dilemma" where's she's protected and fortified herself but has to learn to put down defenses and trust people and the world again. Kravitz and Byron Bowers have solid chemistry in their relationship and you feel Bowers frusturation with trying to be understanding of Angela's trauma while also trying to convince her to come outside her apartment with him. In addition to Bowers, the movie also features a solid supporting cast who appear throughout including David Wain, Andy Daly, Jacob Vargas, and a host of others who help sell the scenario put on screen.
Soderbergh does a great job crafting a modern day thriller whilst utilizing classic thriller tropes that can be traced to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Donen. While the movie does fall under the umbrella of "Covid films" we've seen with the likes of higher end (relatively speaking) films like Songbird or Locked Down to direct-to-video schlock like The Covid Killer or Corona: Fear Is a Virus, KIMI is the first one I feel actually works for the type of movie it's trying to be. Many of those movies mentioned even Songbird or Locked Down which had the resources of Michael Bay and Steven Knight often felt like rushed "strike while the Iron's hot" films designed to catch people with a timely premise and little else substantiating it. Soderbergh and Koepp feel like they utilize the Covid pandemic to tell a story and examine its impact upon a character, but it never feels like its timeliness is being used as a gimmick. Soderbergh brings his usually visual flair to the proceedings as he uses Steadicam when we're inside Angela's apartment, but once we're outside with Angela the filmmaking uses a handheld camera and a number of tilted shots to give a good visual sense of the tension and unease felt by Angela making for great visual storytelling. Koepp's script keeps a solid pace throughout its brisk 89 minute runtime, but you feel like you get to know the characters and the mystery quite well as we're very much placed in Angela's shoes. Admittedly the movie loses some of its tension after the hour mark when everything is "laid out" but that only means it goes from being great to being good, and even if the stuff in the last third pales in comparison to the first hour, it gives a deliciously entertaining pay-off to Angela's arc with some dark as black humor in how she utilizes the Kimi. Koepp's script is also a much less pessimistic and misanthropic take on the material than I've seen with other films that attempt this kind of thing. One standout sequence I loved was when two nameless thugs in a van try to kidnap Angela and some nearby homeless rights protestors block the van from escaping and pull her out of the van and help her to safety.
KIMI takes conventional thriller trappings and applies it to our modern day world without feeling like "headlinesploitation". With a solid script, great direction, and a fantastic performance by Zoe Kravitz, Soderbergh continues to show his strength as a versatile director taking what could've been an average thriller and elevating it with his style.