Zoe Kravitz is on the precipice of stardom. After over a decade of minor roles and some major television roles, she is set to become a leading woman in 2022 thanks to her upcoming appearance as Selina Kyle/Catwoman in The Batman and recently, she turned in an amazing performance in HBO Max’s latest original film, directed by Steven Sodebergh, Kimi.
Kravitz portrays Angela Childs, a tech worker analyzing audio commands from a smart device called Kimi. Angela’s world is well-maintained but she suffers from agoraphobia and in this film, COVID forced her to become even more fearful of the outside world. Her one connection to the outside world, is a neighbor from another apartment that she occasionally invites over for a quick tryst. The pandemic, coupled with a recent assault, causes her to retreat into herself and her apartment, foregoing personal attachments and diving into her work.
While at work one day, Angela hears what she determines to be a violent attack on an unknown woman but when she attempts to bring this to the attention to her superiors, she’s brushed off and told to stay put and bury the information. The why is unclear until armed thugs show up at her local corporate office to kidnap and presumably kill her for what she knows. We find out during the course of the film, that the audio implicates the CEO of her company in a violent rape and murder of the unknown woman. Angela has to carefully evade her pursuers until she is captured and brought back to her apartment where the plan is to kill her in an effort to make it look like a botched home invasion. However, thanks to the intervention of a creepy neighbor and the fact that the would-be killers brought her back to her comfort zone, she’s able to kill her attackers and regain control of her life.
While Kimi doesn’t reinvent the wheel in the thriller genre, it makes new use of tropes seen before but the reason to watch the film is Zoe Kravitz as she gives a compelling, complicated and authentic performance in this real-world techno thriller.
VERDICT: 3 Kimi devices out of 5
Featured Image Credit: IMDb
