Kimi Parent Guide

Angela (Zoe Kravitz) suffers from severe agoraphobia, a condition that’s been exacerbated by spending months in her apartment over lockdown. Thankfully, she’s a tech specialist who analyzes error messages from KIMI, a new digital assistant, and it’s a job she can easily do from home. While working through the error log, Angela finds a recording of what she believes to be an assault. But her boss doesn’t want to hear about it because of the legal liability, and she can’t track down the victim on her own…yet. The more she digs into the recording, however, the more dangerous information she uncovers. Soon Angela is at risk because of what she knows – and worse, she might have to leave her apartment to get to the bottom of it.

We’re at a point in the pandemic where it’s getting a little weird not to see it in films. Movies are either set in an alternate reality where it never happened, or else some vague post-Covid future or the pre-Covid past. Hollywood’s other approach seems to be making cheap sensationalist cash-grabs on the back of a global health crisis, like Songbird. This is the first film I’ve seen set in a contemporaneous reality in which Covid is very much still around, but isn’t a focus of the story. It’s a nice change.

Kimi is a fun and thoroughly modern thriller about the dangers of corporate greed and data privacy, but it draws inspiration from the classics. The cinematography is excellent, whether it’s the steady interior shots, or the phrenetic anxiety-inducing exterior shots. The highlight for me, production-wise, is the score. The trend for thrillers seems to be droning digital scores, but this movie stands out with a classic orchestral score. Not only is it a nice change of pace, but this score in particular reminded me fondly of the music in Hitchcock films like Rear Window.

Unfortunately for younger audiences, the movie has earned its R rating, primarily due to a (largely unnecessary) sex scene and a heaping amount of profanity. I say unfortunately, because without those issues, this would comfortably be a PG-13, despite the brief bloody violence. The violence is an essential part of the plot, and though it is fairly graphic, it could have been much worse.

This is a smart, dynamic thriller from a talented director with a capable cast, a dynamite score, and clever cinematography. Adult fans of both the genre and film in general should give it a look – it might surprise you.