Fast-paced and ruthlessly efficient, Steven Soderbergh’s KIMI is pure craftsmanship in genre filmmaking from one of the most hardworking directors today. It’s just the latest entry in the director’s slate of streaming movies for HBO Max, and one that’s as timely as it could get. The film takes concepts from old surveillance-centered conspiracy thrillers like Rear Window and Blow Out, with bits of ’90s action sprinkled in towards the end, and properly adapts it to the current world of COVID-19 and virtual assistant devices like Alexa. The result is a tight, fun paranoid thriller that’s worth your time (even if you’ve only got less than two hours to spare), carried by the powerhouse performance of Zoe Kravitz.

Largely set in a single loft apartment in Seattle, Angela Childs (Zoe Kravitz) works as a data analyst for a tech company that has a flagship product called KIMI, which is basically the film’s equivalent of Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home. Although not as refined as its real-world counterparts, Angela listens in on conversations to find errors in communication from device users. For example, someone asks KIMI to play a specific Taylor Swift song, but the device brings up a whole playlist instead. Angela corrects these miscommunications and teaches the algorithm for a more fine-tuned user experience.

Angela is also extremely agoraphobic. She spends her days working while in quarantine as the COVID-19 pandemic set her anxieties back, refusing to leave her home even when called in by her dentist (David Wein) to root an abscessed tooth. Despite this, she has developed a unique and almost one-sided relationship with a guy across the street named Terry (Bryon Bowers), whom Angela only invites to her place exclusively for some fun times.

As Angela is going through her daily tasks, she hears a recording of what appears to be a criminal activity. There are screams and sounds of struggle muffled by loud music, but she’s tech-savvy enough to successfully isolate it. This incident triggers her own issues of anxiety and past trauma, but she’s compelled enough to report it to the appropriate authorities. It also just so happens that the crime is related to her own company, which is really a bit of a stretch realistically. Nevertheless, this discovery has put Angela into the company’s crosshairs, and leads her down a dangerous path where she begins to fear for her safety.

Running in a sleek 89 minutes, the script written by David Koepp (who’s also penned a slew of Hollywood blockbusters including Jurassic Park and Panic Room) is tight and keeps everything running along efficiently without any narrative fat. It’s a classic story of a protagonist who discovers something they shouldn’t have, so the film is pretty light on unpredictability as we usually know how these things go. The real magic, however, is Soderbergh’s masterful execution in depicting an agoraphobic’s world. He changes his framing when scenes need it to, going from calm to erratic in a moment’s notice, and swaying smoothly around tight spaces as Angela navigates her limited world.

Some of Koepp’s script raises a couple of plausibility issues especially in the final half-hour of the film, and it wraps a bit too cleanly by the end. But there’s no denying that KIMI is a wildly entertaining film, a neat snackable thriller in this age where most movies hit past the two-hour mark. It does not say anything new about the dangers of tech and its issues on privacy – something we already know and live with – but Soderbegh is more interested in exploring ways to hide in a world filled with data-tracking services. Although this may seem like a minor entry in the filmmaker’s work, it’s still enjoyable to see him tackle the topic of surveillance for the modern generation.

Rating: ★★★☆☆