Steven Soderbergh’s manic phase continues with his fifth feature film in four years — and his best since 2017’s Logan Lucky. One of Soderbergh’s most enduring interests – hearkening back to his debut feature, 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape – is in surveillance, in the relationship between the viewer and the viewed. Which is why I’m so surprised that KIMI, his new thriller on HBO Max, is the first time he’s pulled so clearly from classics like Rear Window, Blow Out, and The Conversation.
“Kimi?”
Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz) is a Seattle-based tech worker for Amygdala Enterprises. A severe agoraphobe whose fears were compounded by the pandemic, Angela spends her days at home going through faulty recordings of Kimi devices, an Alexa-like voice-operated computer system. Her job is to listen to Kimi’s mistakes and update the record. Are there regionalisms they didn’t program in? She’ll add it. Are there song titles that confuse Kimi? She’ll program a workaround.
But when a confusing, distorted piece of audio crosses her desk, her obsessive tendencies flare up. She cleans up the audio — and reveals what sounds like an assault in progress. The company doesn’t seem to care. Some want her to just delete it and move on. Others want her to come in and share what she’s discovered with apathetic higher-ups.
Instead, Angela begins to dig deeper. In doing so, she discovers what sounds like a premeditated murder. Unbeknownst to her, however, the murder is tied deeply to Amygdala Enterprises’ own CEO — and he knows exactly what she’s doing.
“I’m here.”
For enormous chunks of the movie, KIMI is a one-woman show. And Zoë Kravitz absolutely crushes it. Kravitz plays a wounded, obsessive introvert who simultaneously yearns for connection and rejects the outside world. Her job is thankless, but she’s good at it, in part because of those obsessive tendencies. I tend to find that most actors portraying mental illness tend to… exaggerate it considerably, we’ll say. Kravitz never does. From her obsessive hand-sanitizing — complete with a familiar little arm wave every time — to her awkward, stick-to-the-walls movement, her portrayal is strong but not loud.
She gets a lot of help from the camera. Soderbergh tends to literalize his themes with the camera. No Sudden Move, for example, was filmed with an old-school lens, creating a kind of fish-eye effect at times. In static shots, the movie looked great. When the film’s abduction and heist plans were working, the movie looked good. But when things went wrong and people had to move, quickly and decisively, the film’s frame bent and bowed.
In KIMI, the cinematography tracks with Angela’s mental state. The camera moves through Angel’s apartment smoothly, comfortably. Everything is in its place. When she leaves her house, however, the camera’s movements become jerkier, the edits more chaotic. It flips the line, making even the direction Angela is moving uncertain. I often deal with sensory overload issues, not from being outside, but from being in large gatherings. I always have. I’ve never seen a movie capture how it felt to walk through a very normal space that nevertheless feels confusing and hostile to me.
“Reopen last stream on desktop.”
KIMI wears its influences on its sleeve. Given how housebound Angela is and how much time she spends gazing out a window, Rear Window is a clear influence. But so is Blow Out, Brian De Palma’s 1981 masterpiece about an audio technician who unwittingly recorded a murder. As with Blow Out, KIMI is interested in the way our surveillance apparatus’ see and hear so much more than we expect — and the way people in power, who are happy to utilize that technology, can quickly turn violent when it is suddenly used against them.
While I don’t think KIMI lives up to its influences, I still had a good time overall. Perhaps a better comparison might be to KIMI screenwriter David Koepp’s early 00’s thriller, Panic Room. I don’t often see Panic Room listed as Fincher’s best film, or one of the best of the 2000s. And yet, everyone I know thinks Panic Room is good as hell. You know why? Because Panic Room is good as hell. It’s a tight, concise thriller that knows exactly what it wants to say and do, and does it with workmanlike efficiency.
KIMI felt the same way. At a tight 89 minutes, it did exactly what it set out to do and did it well. This is the perfect movie for a chilly evening on the couch. It reminds me of an Elmore Leonard novel: Short, to-the-point, but masterfully executed and full of colorful characters and interesting commentary.