Kimi (2022) ****

 

I clicked on this movie for two reasons. One is that it stars Zoe Kravitz. The other is that the summary sounded eerily similar to a trio of movies from the past: "Blow Up" (1966), "The Conversation" (1974), and "Blow Out" (1981).  Like "Kimi," each of these films features a reclusive technical expert discovering evidence of a crime lurking in some type of media.

First of all, Kimi is not the name of the main character. It is a voice-activated AI assistant, like Siri or Alexa. The fictional Kimi system uses human techs to listen to misunderstood voice commands and continually improve the system's performance. One of those techs is Angela (Kravitz), an obsessive-compulsive agoraphobe. The Covid pandemic has just reinforced Angela's stay-at-home/work-from-home tendencies, and she never ventures out of her apartment. The closest she comes to the outside world is watching her neighbors through the windows. One of these is Terry, a quiet, kind guy who occasionally crosses the street to give Angela a roll in the hay, and who is getting frustrated at her inability to overcome her neuroses. Safe in her nest, Angela plies her trade until some disturbing background sounds in one of her Kimi snippets plunges her into a deadly conspiracy.

In addition to the similarities to the movies mentioned above, “Kimi” has been compared to Hitchcock's “Rear Window.” It's fair to say that the film is not a complete original, but it does update the concepts for the Covid/internet era. The film at least touches on the myriad arguments around always-on, voice-activated devices. Clearly, they create privacy risks, and the film mentions that they can be hacked. On the other hand, the crime in this case would not have been discovered without the use of Kimi. Angela also uses Kimi to good effect in fighting back against her attackers. Speaking of which, we knew that Zoe Kravitz is a stone fox and a crackin' actress, but who would have guessed that she is also an action hero?

I want to give some credit to screenwriter David Koepp (“Jurassic Park” “Panic Room”). The characters don't always make the best decisions, but they at least make decisions that make sense for their character. This separates “Kimi” from so many lazily-written films in which the script just has the characters perform whatever nonsensical action is required to move the plot forward. “Kimi” is a tightly-crafted thriller with an excellent lead actress, that comes in at under an hour and a half. Tell Alexa or Siri to play it for you now!

4 stars out of 5