While the movie business continues to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the industry, very few films have really reckoned with it on an artistic level. While some pandemic-era movies and shows tried to depict life as it was, many of them seemed to exist in a parallel universe where it had never happened at all. Some of this probably comes down to the fact that it’s hard to really make sense of something that happened so recently. With the release of Ari Aster’s Eddington, it’s possible that Hollywood might be beginning to turn the collective nightmare into art.
One movie that did successfully capture the anxieties of pandemic life as it was happening is Kimi, Steven Soderbergh’s 2022 film starring Zoë Kravitz. Released on HBO Max to critical acclaim but very little fanfare, it was one of many releases to come and go around that time. But Kimi might be one of the best pandemic movies so far, working as a commentary and an entertaining techno thriller.
How ‘Kimi’ Captures Pandemic Life
HBO Max
Kravitz stars as Angela, a remote tech worker who makes a living evaluating communication mishaps between people and their “Kimi” devices, a smart speaker akin to Alexa. While most people aren’t leaving their homes much these days, Angela has more reason to stay home than just fear of getting sick. She’s developed a severe case of agoraphobia since surviving an assault, making even going to meet her lover Terry (Byron Bowers) at a taco truck an impossible task.
One day, while working, she discovers audio captured by a Kimi that contains what sounds like an assault. She reports it to her superiors, who want nothing to do with it, making her even more motivated to uncover the truth. With the help of her Romanian programmer friend Darius (Alex Dobrenko), she uncovers more of the user’s audio files, and finds something even more disturbing. This sets her on a path to leave her apartment to seek justice for a crime that Kimi’s parent company will stop at nothing to cover up.
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Angela’s agoraphobia serves as an effective stand-in for the fear that many people felt towards the outside world in the pandemic’s early days, where any minor interaction carried the potential of fatal illness and even simple tasks felt insurmountable. Kimi takes place after the worst has passed, when things are still very much not normal, but the world has more or less resumed. It reflects the new realities of life for a lot of people at that time, where fears lingered even as society was pushed to return to normal.
The pandemic supercharged the enmeshing of tech into every aspect of life, when many people could have their needs completely met without ever leaving their homes, and Kimi taps into the cost of that convenience. Reminders of the Kimi device’s usefulness are everywhere, and nobody thinks twice about having a live microphone in their homes at all times. It’s abundantly clear that Amygdala, Kimi’s parent company, only cares about their bottom line, going so far as to commit murder to protect their ability to go public. It’s an extreme version of something very real: that while tech companies sell us a Utopian vision made possible by their products, their main goal is still to make as much money as possible.
Steven Soderbergh’s Recent Renaissance
HBO Max
If any filmmaker was going to be able to adapt to the restrictions of pandemic-era film productions, it would be Steven Soderbergh. Kimi is one of several films he’s made since his brief hiatus in the 2010s with a small (by Hollywood standards) budget and minimal crew, with Soderbergh shooting and editing himself under various aliases, alongside 2018’s iPhone-shot Unsane and this year’s superlative Black Bag. While he’s done plenty of big-budget work, like the Oceans series, Soderbergh is still an indie filmmaker at heart, and Kimi is another example of his masterful craftsmanship. It helps that the script comes from David Koepp, another master of his craft who’s written everything from Spider-Man to Jurassic Park alongside several films with Soderbergh, including Black Bag and last year’s Presence.
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Unlike a lot of streaming films, Kimi actually did get a physical and digital release, though with diminishing DVD sales, it’s hard to know how helpful that was for its overall numbers. There’s no telling if the film ended up bringing in a return on investment, though its $3.5 million budget would probably be considered a write-off these days. Either way, it didn’t make much of a splash despite its critical praise, becoming another well-made movie to largely disappear from the cultural conversation. With the endless glut of new releases in the streaming era, it takes a lot to stand out, and even good movies can get lost in the noise. While Kimi might not have managed to break through back in 2022, it may go down as one of the best movies to capture its very strange moment in time.
Kimi is available to stream now on HBO Max.
Release Date
February 10, 2022
Runtime
89 minutes
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