KIMI: Film Review
I love plenty of Steven Soderbergh films – Side Effects, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and Magic Mike to name a few – and I can now add KIMI to the mix.
The film follows Angela Childs (Zoe Kravitz), an agoraphobic woman who works remotely as tech support for the Amygdala Corporation. Her job involves her listening to recordings of errors made by their new KIMI device (an assistant like Alexa or Siri) and writing code so the device can understand demands better. One day, she comes across a recording that she believes captures a crime. After she reports it to her higher-ups, Angela realises that she has uncovered a massive scandal and there are certain people who will stop at nothing to cover it up – and she’s no longer safe in her Seattle apartment.
At first, I thought this was going to be like The Woman in the Window – an agoraphobic woman with mental health issues who needs to leave her house to get to the bottom of a crime – but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. KIMI feels very current as it features working from home, a smart speaker, and the Covid-19 pandemic is very much still ongoing. Angela is very smart, tech-savvy and has figured out a way to do pretty much everything without leaving her flat. Plus, it’s a regular thriller – with some action towards the end – rather than a psychological one.
I loved the concept, the character of Angela, and how the sense of tension and threat escalated in the latter half – when the film stopped being contained to the apartment. The movie is only 89 minutes so it flew by and left me wanting more. It was pretty light on detail about the scandal itself so I would have liked to know more about that. We learn plenty about Angela throughout the movie – her backstory is drip-fed to us well – but I was so intrigued by her that I would have happily had some more details about her life too. More meat on its bones would have been great.
The weight of this movie rests solely on Kravitz’s shoulders – the majority of the film is just her going about her day, listening to recordings and chatting to people virtually. The world of KIMI does eventually open up but she is still the focus and she is captivating the whole time. Kravitz was terrific as this blue-haired, unusual character. There are also small appearances from Byron Bowers and Devin Ratray as her neighbours and Rita Wilson as one of the Amygdala bosses.
Soderbergh has created an exciting – if slight – thriller with a commanding performance from Kravitz. Check it out!
On Sky Cinema from Saturday 19th February