There have been countless thrillers about women who shut themselves away in their homes, only to learn that the world inside may be even more terrifying than the one outside. Not all of them are winners; for every ’60s classic like Repulsion or Wait Until Dark, there’s also a howler like last year’s overwrought Hitchcock homage The Woman in the Window. The gripping new movie Kimi is a nifty little addition to the shut-in canon. Like a lot of Steven Soderbergh‘s output of late, it’s a sleek, low-budget genre exercise that’s eerily keyed into our current moment.
The movie takes place sometime mid-pandemic and follows a 30-something woman named Angela, played by a terrific Zoë Kravitz. She works for a large Seattle tech firm that manufactures Kimi, one of those virtual home assistants, like Siri or Alexa, that will dim your lights, play your music and patiently try to answer your every question.