KIMI

A decent post-COVID variation on Caruso's Disturbia in the online world which is basically unremarkable in formal terms. At the same time, however, I couldn't shake the feeling from the second half onwards that Steven Soderbergh had either genuinely lost his earlier strong auteur signature or was directly required to do so in this case. David Koepp and Cliff Martinez are also basically icons in their respective fields, yet the whole thing comes across as sterile without any glimmer of invention or originality. Good consumable material for streaming (if you compare it to any recent "Netflix original", maybe more than good), I just would have expected more from a lineup like this. [60%] (09.04.2022)

I don't really understand the complaints that this film is just a one-off and a wannabe variation on Hitchcock by Soderbergh's standards. KIMI is a conceptually brilliant genre film, where a savvy filmmaker expertly conveys outdoor threats to a heroine suffering from agoraphobia and subordinates all stylistic choices to the narrative in a meaningful way. In its short runtime, it runs like clockwork and makes the most of every motif at the right time. A film from the heart and from a man who knows what he wants to tell and how he wants to tell it. And that's really not the norm. 85 % (12.02.2023)

A Hitchcockian denouement with a better-than-typical thriller finish. They build the tension in the confined space of an apartment better than “out there”. Anyway, a likeable Soderbergh one-off. (15.03.2022)