Angela Childs never leaves her Seattle apartment. But she always has company.
A troubleshooting tech worker for a startup digital assistant service—called Kimi—Angela spends her workdays listening to other people talk. Her job is to help Kimi do its own job better: When someone asks Kimi something that it doesn’t understand, she interprets. Bit by bit, word by word, Angela and Kimi work together to give Kimi’s customers the best possible service. By the time Kimi’s parent company, Amygdala, goes public, she’ll be everything that Siri and Alexa wish in their digital dreams of sheep they could be.
’Course, that means that Angela has to listen in on a lot of conversations, and most of Kimi’s customers don’t realize someone alive might be eavesdropping.
Then again, some might.
As Angela plows through her screen of Kimi prompts and problems, she stumbles across something unusual: a lot of loud techno music and, faintly, what sounds like someone—a woman—being beaten. A woman crying.
Angela sends the file to her supervisor, who tells her to forget it—especially with the company’s initial public offering just a week away. “Our devices pick up things,” he says. “Lots of things. Our policy is it’s not our business.”
But a crime? A potential assault? That should be everyone’s business, Angela believes. She knows what it’s like to be assaulted. She knows what it’s like to be ignored. It’s a big reason why Angela doesn’t—can’t—leave her apartment anymore. This isn’t a file she can just delete.
Angela calls in a favor and gets some additional audio from that particular user’s Kimi. She quickly realizes that the user—Samantha—was purposefully using the assistant to record and document encounters with her assailant. But the last recording doesn’t feature the assailant’s voice: It’s the rough audio of a professional murder.
Finally, a tearful Angela finds a sympathetic ear in Amygdala. Natalie Chowdhury promises to take the audio seriously. And if Angela comes in, the two of them can play the audio for the FBI together.
But for that, Angela will have to leave her apartment—to venture into a world filled with threats, both real and imagined.
And perhaps, lurking out there in the streets of Seattle, there’s a threat or two that Angela hasn’t even dared imagine. Not yet.
Let’s give credit to Angela for taking seriously what she hears and trying—unlike a lot of other folks in the film—to do something about it. Certainly, the ticklish issues of privacy are worth considering here. But as many a crime-novel detective might say, no secrets are off limits when it comes to murder.
Angela receives a bit of an assist from an admittedly creepy, binocular-wielding neighbor, too. He ultimately risks his life for a woman he’s never even met (even though he spies on her from afar). Also, a bevy of Seattle citizens—protesting a different issue altogether—refuse to stand aside when some bad guys try to do something bad. In an age where people sometimes simply don’t want to get involved, these bystanders don’t stand by: They act. And in so doing, they help save someone’s life.
None.
While Angela doesn’t go out, she does invite a neighbor, Terry, in. The two have sex (we see movements and hear gasps and groans), and afterward Angela walks around the apartment topless (in panties) in dim light. She puts on a tight top that barely makes things better, and her paramour lies on the bed in his boxers.
She has a couple of admirers, too. One of her coworkers, working in Romania, calls her “hotness” (even though Angela tells him that he could get fired for that). And we learn that Angela’s creepy neighbor has done some research on her.
We see Angela wrapped in a towel (shoulders bared) and, very indistinctly, in the shower itself. Her mother doesn’t approve of how Angela and her apparent boyfriend “met,” by eyeing each other through their apartment windows. “I’m not sure if I approve of you waving in the window like a hooker in Amsterdam,” she says.
Samantha, meanwhile, seems to have had some sort of consensual relationship with her assailant (Brad) before …
… Brad raped Samantha. She accuses him explicitly of rape on a Kimi recording, and we hear Brad apparently beat her, too. When Kimi records the audio of her murder, Angela connects those sounds to images—images that we, the viewer, see on screen (involving a slit neck, some blood and a convenient bag to put the body in).
We hear vaguely about Angela’s assault. But her immediate peril takes center stage. She’s nearly kidnapped, thrown into a black van that she narrowly escapes. (She kicks one of her would-be kidnappers in the face, which helps.)
Three people die via nail gun. (We see one nail embedded in a victim’s forehead. Another victim is shot several times, and we see that one of the nails has skewered his hand.) Two people are stabbed (and we see quite a bit of blood, despite the darkened room in which the violence take place). Someone’s jabbed in the leg with an umbrella—which injects a knock-out chemical in the victim.
We hear more than 20 f-words and eight s-words. Also on tap: “a–,” “d–k,” “b–ch” and “h—.” God’s name is misused four times (once with “d–n”), and Jesus’ name is abused twice. We also hear one of Kimi’s users call the digital assistant a very crass, juvenile insult.
Angela takes a number of prescription medications, most likely to help her deal with her anxiety. She requests a painkiller from her dentist, hoping to deal with a toothache without going into the office. The dentist refuses.
Angela’s Romanian cohort is drunk during one of their conversations; he does shots as he talks. There’s a passing mention of martinis.
There’s a lot of hypocrisy in play from folks at various levels of the Amygdala organization.
KIMI, the film, has quite a bit on its mind: technology both helpful and harmful; sieve-like tech security; voyeurism, both real and digital; COVID; #MeToo. Those are all elements worth some consideration, and the movie weaves them together in a taught, fast-paced story: The whole film clocks in at under 90 minutes.
Alas, KIMI stuffs a lot of R-rated content into its scant runtime, too, including an extended topless sequence and a parcel of harsh profanities.
The main villain in KIMI will go to almost any length to get away with murder. The film tries to get away with some unfortunate content, too. It’s up to the would-be viewer to decide whether to let it.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
