Steven Soderbergh has a new thriller movie coming to HBO Max in February, starring Zoe Kravitz as a ‘voice stream interpreter’ and the first trailer is out now. Soderbergh is using devices such as Siri and Alexa as the basis of a ‘woman thinks she’s witnessed a murder but no one believes her’ storyline in his latest film, Kimi.
The film’s title refers to a fictitious voice-activated digital assistant called KIMI. It hears everything you say all the time, recording everything for a Big Brother-like corporation. Kravitz plays Angela Childs, a voice stream interpreter who overhears a murder on a recording she was analysing. Angela is shaken after reaching out to her colleagues. Why are her employers resistant to her trying to bring this to the authorities’ attention?
In an interview with IGN, Soderbergh described his influences as The Conversation, Rear Window and Panic Room. And the writer of Kimi, David Koepp, also wrote the screenplay of Panic Room. Kimi is loosely based on the case of a real-life murder that was recorded by Alexa.
Shot under COVID protocols last year, Kravitz’s character is agoraphobic and some people are seen wearing masks in the film, striking the balance of it not being a ‘pandemic film,’ but also acknowledging the world we are now living in.
Soderbergh says that we should be scared of giant corporations such as Amazon and Apple and he is amazed that anyone lets devices such as the Amazon Echo into their home.
Soderbergh has had an extremely busy and prolific ‘post-retirement’ period, with Logan Lucky, Unsane and Netflix’s High Flying Bird. This will be his third film for HBO Max in quick succession, after Let Them All Talk starring Meryl Streep and No Sudden Move starring Benicio Del Toro and Don Cheadle.
The trailer can be viewed in IGN’s tweet below;
Steven Soderbergh directs the tech thriller KIMI, starring Zoë Kravitz.
Check out the exclusive trailer as well as our one-on-one interview with the Oscar-winning filmmaker, who believes “you should be” scared of the likes of Amazon and Alexa: https://t.co/lK9X3lhraC@hbomax pic.twitter.com/eXBJr4r58z
— IGN (@IGN) January 11, 2022
If you’re a fan of Soderbergh, check out our guide to the best drama movies to find out which of his movies made the cut.
Kimi will be available on HBO Max on February 10.