HBO Max had a new movie released directly to their streaming service this week, Kimi. It is staring Zoë Kravitz as an anxiety filled worker for a massive tech giant that sends off Amazon vibes. It not only seems to critique them and other tech giants as well, but it also delves into covid anxiety, domestic abuse, and trauma, and it does this all in less than 90 minutes. It is a decent movie, and I always appreciate when a movie can finish in 90 minutes and have a lot going for it. With that being said, it was good, but not great, and it is better than many of Netflix’s direct releases.
Kimi is the story of Angela, a worker for the Amygdala company. She works from home in her very nice apartment in downtown Seattle. For work she takes mistakes made by the Kimi on voice commands, and then she rewrites the code so that the error is not made again. Angela also has a boy friend that lives across the street, and they have a weird window relationship. Angela has a traumatic past, and she has high anxiety, and it was amplified even more so when Covid came about. Then during her work, she finds a recording from a Kimi where it sounded like a violent crime was occurring. Angela tries to go to Amygdala corporate, and they do not seem to care initially, because they are about to have their IPO, so they did not want any negative press. Eventually Angela feels like she is going to get help and becomes brave enough to go out into the world and try to do some good. When she gets to the office, Angela finds out that it is a setup, and that the head of Amygdala is the perpetrator in the crime.
So clearly there is a strong criticism on the ever-present technology in our lives and all the listening it does. In this instance, it does end up helping solve a crime, but even then, it seems like the main idea behind it is that this is invasive technology. When trying to solve the crime, Angela delves deep into the victim’s voice recordings because the company has been saving them and filing them. They are clearly saving the data and using it. Also, Amygdala was trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug. It was pointing out that big time corporations only care about their bottom line. If a problem is threating the amount of money they are going to make, then it is clearly something that needs to be hidden.
The biggest focus on this film comes from the anxiety. Angela is very clearly scared of going outside. Initially it seems like a pandemic problem. There is a scene of her making a plan with the guy across the street, but she has a panic attack before she can even open the door. The anxiety of this film is amplified even more due to most of the movie taking place in her apartment. It is a very claustrophobic environment for a movie, especially for someone who did not want to go out, it felt even more constraining. This trend continues, as she must convince herself to go outside to bring the crime to light. It was commendable to see her get out of her comfort zone and take the train to the corporate office. While in the Amygdala office, she also elaborates in her past and the trauma she went through that also causes her not to want to leave the apartment. Then the anxiety gets ramped up once Angela realizes that Amygdala is out to get her and a chase ensues with one failed kidnapping attempt, where Angela is pulled into a van, but she gets rescued by a mob of protesters in a wild scene.
There was also a critique on society’s lack of empathy for those who went through trauma. Angela went through a traumatic event a few years before, and this has caused her to be very timid in her life, especially when it comes to going into the outside world. She has some contact with the outside world, she talks to her mom on facetime, and her mom seems to be completely over the whole thing, and she treats her daughter like she is lesser due to her anxiety. There was no caring or loving tone coming from her mom. Then there was the interaction with the therapist. Therapists are supposed to help a person overcome their inner problems and hopefully break down barriers, but this therapist seemed tired of discussing the same problem with little progress. It seemed like the therapist was trying to forcefully control the session in a way that made Angela uncomfortable. Also there was her boyfriend, and he was repeatedly annoyed by Angela’s unwillingness to even talk about going outside of her apartment.
Then there were a few subtle jabs at social media and people creating fake lives online. Angela had an Instagram account where she would post pictures of different places, claiming to have been there and gone through the experience, but in reality, she just stole the pictures from somewhere and posted them. People try to curate a level of their own perfect reality online, and some are more willing to fantasize it than others, she clearly was willing to lie about her life to the fullest extent, whereas some people just try to make it look like their life is always happy and smooth flowing. Social media has a serious trend of making people unhappy due to them comparing themselves to others and feeling like lesser, and this is why someone like Angela feels pressured to create a fake account to make her life look better than it is.
Overall, this was a decent movie. It took 15 minutes to really get started, but it did a good job of creating the feeling of anxiety, and it got its message across with ease. It is worth a watch. Kravitz has become increasingly popular, and it will culminate with her performance as Catwoman in Batman in two weeks. It feels like there will be a dump of pandemic related movies coming out over the course of the next few years, so I feel like being one of the first people to get a pandemic related movie out is best before it feels overplayed, and it will get overplayed quick. I give this film three stars, and if you have HBO Max watch it, but if not, it is not worth subscribing to the service for it.
Other Movies This Week:
Death on the Nile: A murder mystery that takes quite a while to really get started. They have to introduce all the characters, and their potential motives to murder. Then once the murder occurs the movie hits its stride, but it is not that great. It is on the bad side of the Murder Mystery genre, you would be much better off watching Knives Out. Also this was a bit predictable.
New Rankings:
Kimi: 3 Stars
Death on the Nile: 2.5 Stars
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