Thriller Week continues with the latest directorial effort from the legendary Steven Soderbergh who apparently filmed this on the fly in Seattle at the height of the COVID pandemic.
This movie is a nifty little thriller starring Zoey Kravitz as a tech analyst for a new modern home-based communications device along the lines of Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri….this one is called the “Kimi.”
While analyzing some voice streams recorded by users of this device, she stumbles onto a recording that might provide evidence of a violent crime. And when she starts to investigate the source of this recording and report it…..she then starts to find herself in danger!
Host: Geoff Gershon
Producer: Marlene Gershon
https://livingforthecinema.com/
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Thriller Week continues with the latest directorial effort from the legendary Steven Soderbergh who apparently filmed this on the fly in Seattle at the height of the COVID pandemic.
This movie is a nifty little thriller starring Zoey Kravitz as a tech analyst for a new modern home-based communications device along the lines of Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri….this one is called the “Kimi.”
While analyzing some voice streams recorded by users of this device, she stumbles onto a recording that might provide evidence of a violent crime. And when she starts to investigate the source of this recording and report it…..she then starts to find herself in danger!
Host: Geoff Gershon
Producer: Marlene Gershon
https://livingforthecinema.com/
#livingforthecinema #moviereviews #kimi #stevensoderbergh #zoeykravitz #thriller #hbomax
https://livingforthecinema.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Living-for-the-Cinema-Podcast-101167838847578
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecinema/
Letterboxd:
https://letterboxd.com/Living4Cinema/
KIMI - 2022
Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Audio clip)
Starring Zoe Kravitz, Byron Bowers, Rita Wilson, Jaime Camill, Jacob Vargas, Erika Christiansen, Devin Ratray, and Robin Givens
Genre: Suspense Thriller
Nowadays I start to feel like a broken record or just a deluded fanboy praising the latest joint from Steve Soderbergh but the dude is prolific and has chops! Since his "comeback" with Logan Lucky in 2017, he's done pretty well with mostly smaller-scale films (The Laundromat being the one bloated exception), and with Kimi, he has directed another highly enjoyable paranoia thriller in the vein of Unsane from a few years ago. Also like Unsane, Kimi has one glaringly obvious plot point which doesn't hold up to scrutiny but...if you look past it, there's no reason you won't have a good time. ;) Let’s just say that the inciting incident which sets the plot in motion doesn’t actually make much sense when you learn to understand the REASONING for said inciting incident….and we’ll just leave it at that.
Regardless, this film could be described as one part Blow Out, one part Panic Room and to be fair...at a lean 90 minutes on a relatively small budget, it never approaches the stylistic flourishes of either of those films. (Not that it's trying to) This is a lean, mean cat-and-mouse thriller that makes great use of its limited use of locations (set in Seattle, mostly around one loft) and features a sterling central performance from Zoe Kravitz.
Kravitz pretty much appears in every scene and plays Angela, an agoraphobic tech analyst for a growing organization that manufactures the "Kimi" device which very much resembles Siri or Alexa in that it's voice-activated and designed to help its owner with various communication-related tasks. There's just one added wrinkle to this device (at least as far as we know) in that its company employs folks like Angela to analyze all voice streams directed through for....reasons....related to quality control....hmmm.
Well, one day, Angela discovers a stream that hints of a violent struggle amidst other sounds - she delves into it, investigates further, and reports it to her superiors as she suspects a violent crime has actually been recorded by this particular Kimi device. And of course, with her being agoraphobic (she never leaves her loft) resulting from a traumatic incident just a few years prior, Angela not only struggles with her efforts to communicate with others to report this but she's also quite shaken up with what she eventually uncovers. (Audio clip)
And I'll leave it at that as this story takes increasingly tense and violent turns leading to some crisply executed setpieces along the way. All of this is taking place within our modern COVID-19-infected world and props to Soderbergh (and genre-veteran screenwriter David Koepp) for so effectively utilizing the pandemic/endemic (?) to help drive the story forward (along with Angela's state of mind) without ever feeling exploitive. Paranoia about surveillance and/or the spread of infection has always kinda gone hand-in-hand right? :)
Kravitz plays our central protagonist as quite damaged but also boundlessly resourceful. It's a very effective physical performance at its core. There are moments when we see her traversing out amidst the outside world with her bright bob of blue hair covered under a pastel hoodie walking quickly in a VERY staccato fashion, never making eye contact....she comes off as a less severe-looking Lisbeth Salander but no less confounding to interact with.
Now if you're expecting jarring third act twists or to have your mind blown at the end, you're likely to be disappointed as Soderbergh keeps the story relatively simple and conventional through its conclusion. There's not much here from a narrative standpoint which we haven't seen in dozens of conspiracy thrillers before, despite some obvious 21st Century updates. But that's ok because overall, Kimi succeeds with what it aims to accomplish thanks to strong craft across the board including effective short turns from its supporting cast (Including Erika Christiansen and Jacob Vargas, both carry-overs from Soderbergh's Traffic from twenty years ago), a suitably tense synth score from Cliff Martinez, (Audio clip) and....strong work from Soderbergh himself as Editor and also DP.
Best Needledrop (best song cue or score used throughout the runtime of the film):
There are few better ways to ensure a big smile on my face at the end of a movie than to close it out with an unexpected needle-drop that is SO on-the-nose and obvious with its usage that you just kinda say to yourself, “Wow REALLY they’re using THAT?? Well…..bravo….BRAVO!” For probably THE perfect example of this, see the ending of The Crying Game….a movie which I will definitely review this year at some point.
Well at the very end of Kimi as the camera pans across her apartment and then out the window, we hear the opening scratchy synthesizer notes of what I consider to be one of THE catchiest power-pop songs of the ’90s, “Connection” from a UK one-hit-wonder band which has always been close to my heart, Elastica. This song was a pretty sizeable alternative rock radio hit back in ’95 and came from their debut self-titled album- it’s all raspy punk vocals from lead singer Justine Frischman over an irresistible mid-tempo thump from drummer Justin Welch….both of whom were apparently the only two consistent members of this band during its tenuous run before they officially broke up just six years later in 2001.
Not to really give away the ending, but the inclusion of this song can be read any number of ways – even ironically – but with the themes of the movie including isolation and surveillance, it ALL comes down to whether you can make a CONNECTION….get it? (Audio clip)
Wasted Talent (most under-utilized talent involved with film):
It was a kick to see Robin Givens plays a small role in just a couple of short scenes via Skype as Angela’s mother. Givens came up in the ’80s through the sitcom “Head of the Class” and had the makings of becoming a genuine star in the early ’90s with strong performances in Boomerang and A Rage in Harlem. Unfortunately, it seems that her very public toxic marriage (and divorce) to former boxing champion Mike Tyson kind of tossed that aside as she became more well-known for tabloid rumors than her acting ability. Since the ’90s, Givens has done steady work in a lot of major television – Once Upon a Time, Riverdale, and even the recent reboot of Head of the Class - but this was the first big Hollywood movie I could remember seeing her in for quite some time….and I would have liked a bit more. She seems to have believable chemistry with Kravitz through their limited interactions….there’s clearly a troubled relationship there which is hinted at. As this could have provided just a BIT more backstory for Angela’s past, why not have one more conversation between mother and daughter? Givens is a strong enough actress to have added a bit more so this was just a missed opportunity….
Trailer Moment (scene or moment that best describes this movie):
In the best thrillers, the best moments can often come down to the most simple, relatable little things and Kimi is no exception. Early in the film, Angela invites over one of the few people she is comfortable with for….a late-night rendezvous. It’s Terry, the handsome attorney played by Byron Bowers who lives across the courtyard from her loft – they can often see each other just looking out their windows and you get the sense that they have had encounters like this one periodically. Well, they get to their business and it seems passionate and then….Angela abruptly gets up from the bed while Terry is trying to talk to her about places to go in the area, he invites her to a local Thai restaurant and PROMISES that they can get there early right when they open, just before anyone else arrives. You can tell the dude really likes her and is also aware of her phobia…..but Angela is just NOT having it as we watch her pull the pillowcases and sheets off the bed, strutting with a purpose in her underwear, gathers them up, and then puts them RIGHT in her washing machine. Pretty cold I know!
Well right after that in an even colder fashion as Terry is following her into her kitchen area trying to talk to her, Angela grabs a fruit drink in a glass bottle from the fridge, takes a swig, and then….as Terry is apologizing to her for even asking her out, she then smacks the bottle down on the edge of her kitchen counter as she declares to him that she can ONLY progress with him on her terms and that she has to now get back to work to review her “streams.” Terry sheepishly leaves, Angela goes to her workstation, and we linger with the camera for just a brief moment seeing that this bottle is about halfway off the edge of that kitchen counter.
Angela starts playing a new stream which mostly sounds like loud, garbled techno music but she also hears what sounds like a woman screaming. She has her headphones listening to this and is startled by what she has heard….she needs to hear it again…..so she takes off the headphones and listens to the same stream aloud on speakers, replaying it, again and again, to suss out the sound of that woman’s scream…..she then moves this file to her own personal laptop where she has more intricate software for sounds….she starts fiddling with different levels of sound pitch on this program to try to isolate the sound but she’s not quite getting it out there by itself. She is now immersed in finding out what EXACTLY is on this stream….as are we, this sequence is now reminding me very much of a similar sequence in Blow Out watching Travolta’s character playback his tapes, again and again, to figure out what the sound of the titular blow out actually was.
We then watch Angela walk across her apartment to a large closet where she pulls out a VERY large amplifier with various plugs and nobs – this is basically an old-school sound system that you would see in recording studios from twenty years prior. She then starts furiously plugging in chords between her laptop and the amplifier…and starts playing the stream again and again and again….all the while she’s turning various nobs on it to keep delving into what she’s hearing at different pitches. We can tell from the expression on her face that she’s listening intently….the camera keeps closing in on various knobs as she turns them along with the running digital stream as she keeps listening again and again. Finally, she is able to isolate one part of the stream with some startling words from a man who is also on the stream, he says, “Shut your mouth bitch!” Whew….Angela pauses, pulls off her headphones as she tries to process this, and then suddenly……SMASH! She’s startled as she hears glass break on the other side of the apartment. She’s shaken up even more….guess what it was? The bottle of fruit juice that we saw her leave on the edge of that kitchen counter about eight minutes earlier – simple, straightforward suspense! Hitchcock would have been proud…and no worries if you’re concerned that I have spoiled too much, all of what I just described occurs within the first half-hour. Things get MUCH hairier from that point on, trust me.
MVP (person or people most responsible for the success of this film): Kravitz, Soderbergh….Soderbergh, Kravitz…..hmmm, why not both? While I would certainly not rank this among his best directorial efforts, Soderbergh executes this thriller to a tee despite limited resources. I literally cannot wait for the next surprise project that he drops on us. (Audio clip)
And regarding Kravitz, it’s hard to believe but she has only been acting since 2007 and has already accumulated QUITE the filmography including 42 credits and she’s done a nice mix of smaller indie films like Dope, big franchise stuff like the Fantastic Beasts series….and even compelling TV/streaming stuff like Big Little Lies. With Kimi being probably one of her first big stand-alone film roles, she just hits it out of the park! She not only nails the emotional aspects of portraying an isolated loner trying to overcome her fears but she also pulls off pretty well much of the physical stuff towards the end – it’s a standout performance and I hope there is more to come. Soderbergh and Kravitz are co-MVPs!
Final Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Nowadays, we need more straightforward genre movies like these and it's good to have at least one stalwart filmmaker sticking around to keep delivering them to us!
Streaming on HBO Max
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Host: Geoff Gershon
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https://livingforthecinema.com/
#livingforthecinema #moviereviews #kimi #stevensoderbergh #zoeykravitz #thriller #hbomax