Kimi

Returning to a more stripped-down style that he departed from recently with No Sudden Move and Let Them All Talk, Steven Soderberg retains his visual skills but dispenses with some missteps in the trifling Kimi. A mostly one-handler for the mostly always-compelling Zoe Kravitz as a computer tech worker who works remotely from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She ends up discovering a file that involves a possible murder, which leads her down a rabbit hole of a potential corporate cover-up, blackmail, kidnapping, and other immoral corporate actions. The film unravels with some tension and falls apart near the climax with a very implausible finale that feels borderline corny and hurried. Overall, Kii is still a relevant and timely tech triller that captures our post-Covid anxiety and isolation that sadly many of has have been accustomed to these last two years.

The film is written by David Koepp, who has a long history of writing and co-writing some very skillfully made popcorn films and thrillers like Jurassic Park (1993), Mission Impossible (1996), Panic Room (2002), and Spider-Man (2002), to name a few. He has also written some high-minded genre films as like Brian De Palma’s 1993 masterpiece, Carlito’s Way. You would think Soderbergh, and Koepp would make a dream team. They do make quite a duo, though some of the writing and characterization could have been polished. There are, in fact, some taut scenes, some fun humor, and an engaging yarn to be found despite the hermetic setting of the film. The major misstep here is how Soderbergh fails to bring any depth to Zoe Kravitz, and her character isn’t quite as engaging as you would hope. This is surprising given how engaging she is in other films such as Gemini and The Road Within. She also appears to be a very impressive Catwoman in the upcoming Batman film. In this film, her character holds some anxiety and is very much an introvert who has agoraphobia. A fear of one leaving her home which only escalated for Angela (Kravitz) due to the pandemic. Kavitz pulls through though and her performance ends up becoming both commanding and convincing.

What appears to be a solid build up actually becomes a less interesting one in the first act as Soderberg allows Zoom meetings, text messages, and facetimes that suffocate the character depth Angela. By the time Angela attempts to go downstairs to get a breakfast burrito with Darius (Alex Dobrenko), a voyeuristic neighbor she texts and has a late-night rendezvous with, yet she doesn’t quite have the energy. Somehow, this moment in the film doesn’t feel involving and you really don’t care what happens next. This is partially due to Kravitz’s charisma and the way Soderbergh presents her. The character of Angela comes off too cold and detached, which is a shame because there is so much potential with the character and her experiences to have homed in greater character depth.

Just as he often does, Soderbergh is mostly a genre filmmaker who likes to dive into new terrain and filmmaking genres from film to film. Looking for a reprise of the suspense-thriller that he has made plenty of before (The Limey, Unsane, The Underneath, Traffic), Soderbergh teams up with Koepp for a film that taps into our collective fears about the pandemic and our ever-growing distrust of corporations. It is almost un-Orwellian in its commentary on big tech’s surveillance, in how our own devices are in fact recording everything we do, yet big tech companies are reluctant to get involved with something that involves potential murder to avoid dealing with a massive amount of government red tape.

Koepp and Soderbergh are certainly taking a cue or two from The Conversation, Blow-Out, and Rear Window as Angela overhears recorded evidence of an actual murder, while going through files of recordings made on Kimi, which is clearly a variation of Siri. Once she dives deeper into the recording, Angela decides to inform upper management and the FBI, which leads her to take these actions and gets her out of her apartment. Some of the angles and aesthetics with Soderbergh’s wide lenses and use of cell phones recapture and heighten the paranoia that was used so effectively in Unsane makes a return, but with more minor results. Regardless, this is the moment in the narrative where it begins to become more thrilling and sophisticated.

In the film’s standout scene, there is a brilliant exchange that borders on satire where Angela visits her boss, Natalie (Rita Wilson), who’s more involved in handling HR related matters. Over the phone, Natalie sounds deeply concerned and reassures Angela that they will have a third party recording the incident and promises to call the FBI, only for Natalie to break those promises as she ends up just becoming a corporate shrill.

In the end, Kimi ends up becoming another experimental exercise for Soderbergh. In 2009, he released The Girlfriend Experience, which was one of the first films to be released right after the economic collapse. Now he’s helmed a film that takes place during the pandemic. Both Soderbergh and Koepp rely on hoodwinking the audience with their suspense, so that some of the loose ends that involve blackmailing the CEO (Derek DelGaudio), who’s involved in the cover-up and is being blackmailed by someone within the company, don’t slip by without sheer contrivance. There isn’t quite enough on screen to make a solid enough thriller, not even with watching Zoe Kravitz, whose character and performance come off a little too self-important and bitter.

After a more interesting second half, once Angela leaves her apartment, there is a well-staged chase scene through the streets of Seattle, and at a protest–and then all the way back to her apartment that involves another voyeuristic neighbor, played by Devin Ratay, who comes off as a tacked-on character. It’s very disjointed and rather head-scratching why Koepp would add another character like that when we already have Darius, but perhaps Koepp just wanted to use him as a punchline that comes at the end. During the preposterous third act back at the apartment, which involves corporate hired hitmen who are sent to get the files and USB drive back from Angela, Soderbergh stages the apartment and scenes in a very gripping manner that has a feel of David Fincher’s Panic Room (which was also written by Koepp). It’s a great reminder of just how skilled a filmmaker Soderbergh is. As clean and technically-savvy as some moments are in Kimi, the film isn’t quite as meticulously framed as visually effective as it could have been with Angela’s condition. With more concise conceptual planning, Soderbergh surely could have made her condition more anxiety-inducing and harrowing. The end result though is a competently scripted and crafted thriller, but it feels like something that just scrapes by. There are certainly some small enjoyable moments to be found, but as a whole, it’s rather a fun, skillful and timely film that is a fairly accurate portrait of our current era.

Kimi is now streaming on HBO Max