‘Kimi’ is a techno-thriller for the pandemic era | review and analysis

Zoë Kravitz in Kimi. Courtesy of HBO Max.

Kimi follows a young tech worker is faced with a corporate conspiracy when she hears a crime through an Alexa-like smart speaker

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There's a scene in Kimi, the newest movie from Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh, when protagonist Angela (Zoë Kravitz) puts her AirPods on to drown out the sounds of her Seattle loft. It mirrored me in my New York City apartment watching the movie with my headphones to drown out the noise coming from the street — and my radiator. When she put her right earbud in, my right headphone went quiet. When she put on the left, my left went silent. It's a small detail, but one that was crucial to my viewing experience.

That was the moment I knew that Kimi was something special.

First of all, for its immersive quality. Like it was made for me to watch it in my apartment with my headphones on immersed in the world. Second, unlike many movies made in the pandemic era, Kimi doesn't shy away from living in that world. Actually, the pandemic helps drive the plot — a twist on the classic Rear Window-esque psychological thriller. Angela already suffered from agoraphobia from a previous assault that left her riddled with anxiety. You could imagine that a global pandemic didn't help her mental state.

Angela sticks to a rigid schedule. She eats breakfast, rides on her Peloton, checks in with her cute neighbor (Byron Bowers) who lives across that street. Soderbergh — known best for directing the Ocean's Trilogy — catches the action as methodically as Angela is. She's just as regimented when it comes to her job as a sort of quality assurance engineer for Kimi, an Alexa or Apple HomePod analog. Angela's job is to analyze snippets of failed requests and correct the mistakes. However, one recording doesn't sit right with her. Something sounds off. Sinister even.

In another wondrous scene of immersive sound design, Angela slowly toys with the audio file— reminiscent of Gene Hackman in The Conversation — until she is able to clearly hear a woman being attacked. The discovery finally gives her a reason to leave her apartment when her boss (Rita Wilson) invites her in to share her discovery. However, these case isn't as simple as a trip to the corporate office.

In Angela's apartment the camera is rigid, steady, and ordered but when it's outside it becomes frenetic and unsteady with unnatural angles mirroring Angela's state of mind. The jarring soundscape juxtaposed against the peace of the apartment is anxiety-inducing. It's what Soderbergh is best at. Evoking the specific feeling he wants you to experience.

Kravitz gives one of the best performances of her career as she portrays the panicked feeling of anxiety that many of us felt in the face of the pandemic. Trying to muster up the courage to go outside and meet her crush for breakfast, she dons her mask, grabs a handful of hand sanitizer packets, and slowly unlocks her door only to be met with the crushing feeling of panic that is so familiar. Soderbergh makes it so easy to empathize with her, something that similar movies — *cough*The Girl on the Train *cough* — fail to do.

After Angela ventures out into the world, Kimi makes the transition to a full-blown thriller for its second half filled with corporate intrigue, paranoia-filled thrills, and a stunning villain turn from Jane the Virgin actor Jamie Camil before pivoting to a third act conclusion that might be too tidy but is certainly satisfying. It tracks with Soderbergh's “post-retirement” era — he announced a retirement from filmmaking in 2015 but apparently got bored. His filmmaking is still as lean, mean, and effective as before. But he's not looking to push his craft or genre further. He's simply having fun and you can tell.

Kimi grapples with many of today's issues — information security, big tech, trauma, homelessness, civil unrest, pandemic anxiety — but it never overstays its welcome and never overstates its purpose. Soderbergh knows that this is a popcorn movie and it's all the best for it. As we move into the post-pandemic era, it'll be interesting to see how filmmakers grapple with our collective trauma. If Kimi is any indication, there are stories just waiting to be heard.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.