What a delicious auteurist recipe! Leave it to Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp to open up a pot and throw in chunks of Blow Out, some The Conversation, Rear Window, Hitchcock, Philip K D (or for you kids, maybe Black Mirror), a few grams of every Agoraphobia/OCD protagonist-led thriller and a squeeze of Home Alone (I mistakenly thought by the premise it could be their Inside but that's not quite the angle), not to mention the cooking energy of Koepp's own Panic Room, and yet with everything like that they manage to create a visually distinct and kinetic (but still coherent), very brisk, intense thriller that is about the times we're in. The camera and editing move things with a surefire pace while inside that apartment, and then once outside the tilted angle walking/running angles and movements give further evidence as to why Peter Andrews takes risks and they more often than not pay off.
And while Kravitz brings her A game to a character that requires a lot of pain and trauma and battling multiple mental illnesses and disorders, I was so impressed by the casting in the supporting roles, with Rita Wilson giving us everything to know who this woman is in less than five minutes, Ratray (you know, hes been in dozens of films and TV shows but he's always Buzz in, once again, Home Alone one and two), that one actor my wife got so excited about who was one of the leads in Jane the Virgin, and in particular Derek DelGaudio as the man who is so in deep s*** and causing all of this criming-and-paying-off in the first place (that is to say the same kind of concerned/serious countenance we got I one brilliant way in In and Of Itself is used in another in his few scenes).
And more than many other films I can think of in the past ten or so years, the themes of omnipresent surveillance, abuse and paranoia are amplified because it's not the future; it's not only here, but worse than many other films or stories anticipated decades ago. The pandemic is the backdrop, but it doesn't feel inconsequential to what's happening here either; all this time being Inside and everything in the world, one doesn't have to go so far to imagine, furthers and worsens the anxiety and negative parts that keeps Angela inside. It's also about how some of us (maybe even the director himself) can't not pay attention to the little details if we are surrounded by the things we are familiar with day in and day out - even, for sure, tooth aches.
This isn't to say some things aren't without criticism, like how little screentime we get with erika Christenen (we do understand what her function is in the film, just more of her would've been cool), and that the movie doesn't make it seem that difficult for Angela to traverse all that outside ground once she opens the door and gets through it (maniacal tilted compositions besides), which is a trope of these kinds of movies.
But Kimi is playful and daring and keeps its feet playfully and yet seriously in the genre, and would probably make for a good painting with Soderergh's own Unsane, also about a woman under dire straits fighting her own inner conflict while powers far greater than her pull the strings. It's a minor idiosyncratic gem by a director and writer who make it seem so easy when it's definitely not.
(PS: wonder if Soderbergh liked how Sabotage was used in the Star Trek movies)
