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Kimi
In some way the movie actually is very similar in concept to Beau Is Afraid. The main character has anxieties about leaving home. And in both films the main character has to go outside on the journey. And in both films the worst type of things happen to them. But while Beau Is Afraid is more about bad situations just being unlucky. In this movie, it is as if the film was written by Richard Stallman and it's a compilation of fears somebody in the Free Software community might feel.
The main character played by Zoë Kravitz, the one you see on the posters, who's name is Angela in the film, not Kimi, by the way, has a very strong fear of open spaces. And she has an extreme anxiety when going outside. All of the stuff inside of her house, Steven Soderbergh ( the director of Kimi ) films normally. Because in the house she feels relatively safe. Even though, even there she is constantly washing her hands. As if she has also a very pronounced OCD. But as soon as she is forced to go outside, the camera goes all kinds of wild. You see hand held work specifically to induce random shake into the camera. You see dutch angles in almost every shot. You feel her anxiety very much. But it's not the worst part.
People who read this website often know about various types of malicious functionalities today's software has. Especially when this software is proprietary and the user have no control over it at all. The film literally starts with an introduction to a fictional company "Amygdala" that sells a device called "Kimi" which is very similar to Amazon Echo / Alexa which is notorious for various nasty malicious functionalities. There are people who refuse to talk while a device like this is present in the room.
In the movie, almost right away we establish that real people sometimes listen to conversations recorded by the device, to help train the neural network of this device to be able to understand human speech more effectively. And the main character Angel is an employee of this company that is listening to those recordings.
Of course all of her devices are connected to Kimi since perhaps all Amygdala employees get one as a gift. And this opens everything she does to be spied upon by the company.
At first I cringed seeing that she has an iPhone and uses a MacBook. But then the tense part of the movie started and I was very happy all of a sudden. The movie just goes over a lot of real life dangers with such spyware one by one. And with each introduction the tension grows more and more. Especially if you are somebody who understands this stuff. The film even more or less accurately portrays a cellphone triangulation which effects both iPhones and Dumb Phones equally. Which makes it a very bad idea to carry any sort of mobile phone ever.
Some aspects of it were a bit in your face. Like the part where the movie wants to comment on End User License Agreements that everybody now a days needs to agree to, but nobody ever reads. The dialogue in that part was something that would be written by a person that just found out how bad it is. And didn't think much of it through. But to be honest, the main character kind of just found out about it herself. So perhaps it's not that bad after all. Just I think I would have written it a bit differently.
Over all the movie is a very well directed and acted way to present the real Orwellian society that we live in. But there seems to be no hope in the movie. Unless you live without tech in general. While in the real file, there is Free Software. Perhaps somebody needs to send Soderbergh a letter about it.
Happy Hacking!!!
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