Kimi

Alfred Hitchcock was born in 1899. If he'd been born in 1999 he'd be the target audience for Kimi, the new thriller from Steven Soderbergh that feels like a modern day remake(ish) of Alfie's own Rear Window replete with facemasks, invasive tech and crippling social anxiety. That aul reliable trio of life ingredients in 2022.

Kimi's the new must have gadget. A smart speaker that not only listens to your every word but one that tracks every movement you make in your home. One of the workers asked with making sense of data streams from Kimi devices worldwide is Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz), a blue haired recluse who's life revolves around her computer screen and her phone. A previous assault combined with a global pandemic has her housebound and her only contacts are her mother and her neighbour Terry (Byron Bowers) who visits her regularly for a bit of how's your uncle. One day a troubling recording catches her eye, one that appears to have captured an attack on a woman in her one home. Her boss doesn't want to know so she goes over his head and soon finds herself in a lot of danger. The type of danger that requires going outside.

Your own gaff. The place you feel most comfortable. Your safe space. It's not something that exists for women in modern day life. Angela knows. She can never relax and her job has turned her into a voyeur, peering into the lives of others, existing vicariously through them. Outdoors is a no-no and her social life is a blend of broken promises and drunken zoom calls. Her discovery of an assault on a woman called Samantha (Erika Christensen) is what kicks her into gear, forcing her out of her comfort zone. It's not hard to spot the real life parallels here. The psychological damage wrought on us all by extended periods of isolation these last few years, the ridiculous access we allow tech companies to have into our lives, the ever increasing violence against women reported daily in news headlines. The fact that Soderbergh and writer David Koepp have managed to turn this raw material into a film that's not absolutely depressing is somewhat of a minor miracle.

Soderbergh's one of the most interesting directors working today. Starting off in arthouse before pivoting into mainstream success and in the last decade becoming a jack of all trades. You never know what you'll get with him, his films dabble in the tropes of genre cinema but feel accessible to everyone, lending his stories an air of palatable unpredictability. Combine this with a breath of fresh air actor like Kravitz and you get a film that sounds stale and unimaginative on paper but one that turns out to be pretty damn pulse pounding in reality. Add in a Home Alone style ending that robs some of it's brutal retribution from Lethal Weapon 2 and you have a crowd pleaser. Speaking of Home Alone, see if you can spot the in-joke. It's rare when a realisation about a stabbed and bleeding character will make you giggle.

Kimi is streaming now on google movies. It's good. Zoë Kravitz has been one to watch for a while now but this and next week's The Batman are about to set her flying.