KIMI: They're listening to us!

KIMI (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, profanity and brief nudity

Available via: HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

This seems to be the month for unusual takes on Alfred Hitchcock classics.

 

I Want You Back is a rom-com riff on Strangers on a Train, while director Steven Soderbergh’s new little thriller is Rear Window by way of the “Internet of Everything,” along with a soupçon of 2002’s Panic Room.

 

Angela (Zoë Kravitz) has just heard something disturbing, while searching user logs for
virtual assistant comprehension parameters that need fine-tuning. But as an
agoraphobe unable to leave the safety of her apartment, what can she do about it?

No surprise about the latter, since this film’s scripter — David Koepp — also wrote that Jody Foster nail-biter. And, as was the case with Panic Room, Koepp’s carefully calculated script for KIMI doesn’t waste a single detail. I admire writers who follow the “Chekhov’s gun” principle: Any seemingly innocuous detail introduced in the first act, needs to be employed by the third act.

I also admire directors who know when to get off the stage. Given the number of overly long, needlessly bloated films that we’ve endured recently, it’s refreshing to watch a tight, taut thriller that clocks in at a just-right 89 minutes.

 

This also may be the first mainstream film that acknowledges Covid as a major part of its narrative.

 

The setting is Seattle, the time now. Angela (Zoë Kravitz) is an agoraphobe also saddled with a healthy dose of OCD; the pandemic has further amplified the fear of leaving her comfortably appointed loft apartment. She paces nervously during bouts of anxiety, hands twitching at her sides: not randomly, but always in specific patterns.

 

She has managed a flirty, window-to-window relationship with Terry (Byron Bowers), who lives in the apartment across the street. Alas, her best-intentioned efforts to meet him at a food truck, on the sidewalk below her place, always go awry when she’s unable to make it through her own front door.

 

All this aside, Angela is a talented tech worker with The Amygdala Corp, tasked with fine-tuning the comprehension parameters of its just-released, “life-changing” Siri/Alexa-esque gizmo, dubbed KIMI. She analyzes other users’ communication data, helping the KIMIs better understand colloquial phrases and alternate definitions: teaching it, for example, that one user’s request to order “kitchen paper” means “paper towels.”

 

Which obviously means that everybody with a KIMI is being monitored, at all times, by a device that’s recording every word and action. And all of that data is subject to additional review by employees such as Angela … and God knows who else, further up the corporate ladder. Or for what purpose.

 

During a brief prologue, we’ve learned that Amygdala’s CEO, Bradley Hasling (Derek DelGaudio), is about to take his company public; thanks to the explosive interest in KIMIs, he expects a hefty payday. But all isn’t quite copacetic, given his troubled reaction to a certain phone call.

 

Meanwhile, Angela stumbles across something odd during an otherwise ordinary data stream; it’s indistinct, buried beneath loud music and additional noise. Prodded by her OCD insistence on order and answers, she meticulously scrubs the ambient sounds…

 

…and hears what sounds like a woman accusing somebody of rape. And then, a bit later, being murdered.

 

Angela is a good citizen, but she’s also a loyal employee who wants to follow proper channels; she therefore contacts not the police, but an Amygdala handler (Rita Wilson, creepily condescending). Bring the recording to the office, she says, and we’ll contact the FBI together.

 

Uh-huh, we viewers think. 

 

Angela, taking this request at face value, agrees.

 

Kravitz is superb throughout the entire film, but this next moment is one of her best, and most marvelously nuanced. Angela copies the data to a flash drive and then, once again, struggles to get past her front door. Kravtiz’s features and body language reflect an agonizing blend of terror, resolve and vulnerability — tellingly, the actress is a little bitty thing — and we grieve for her.

 

Adding fuel to our anxiety, there’s the matter of the suspicious-looking guy (Devin Ratray) who has been spying on Angela from yet another apartment. What’s he up to?

 

Further detail would rob viewers of the lengthy third act’s suspenseful ride; suffice it to say, Soderbergh and Koepp keep us at seat’s edge, breath held, heart in mouth. I miss this masterful, finely tuned, old-school approach to thrillers; too many of today’s overstuffed suspense films sag beneath the weight of extraneous detail and pointlessly long-winded dialogue. This one simply cooks.

 

With good reason. At a time when far too many narcissistic directors demand possessory credit (“A John Smith film”), this really is a Soderbergh film. As has become his custom, he also handles cinematography and editing (hiding behind the respective pseudonyms Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard). He controls every aspect of how this film looks and moves.

 

That said, Soderbergh gets a lot of help from Cliff Martinez’s nervously energetic score, which adds greatly to the third-act excitement.

 

Although not entirely a one-woman show — DelGaudio, Wilson and a few sidebar characters have key moments — Kravitz dominates every scene. That’s a heavy lift for any actor, and Soderbergh extracts a complex performance that’s never less than wholly persuasive. Angela is interesting, even if nothing much is happening; Kravitz’s wary half-smile, when allowed to emerge, is particularly endearing.

 

Production designer Philip Messina gets all the touches spot-on in Angela’s apartment, and our brief glimpses of Amygdala’s offices are appropriately sterile and chilling.

Entertainment value aside, Koepp’s script should make viewers think twice about the virtual assistants that have been invited — so blithely (and foolishly?) — into their lives. Because Big Brother definitely is watching … and it’s naïve to believe otherwise.