This article discusses the ending of the HBO Max original film Kimi and will contain spoilers.
Ready Steady Cut film critic M.N. Miller calls Kimi, “A modernized Hitchcockian thriller.”
The setup for Steven Soderbergh’s modernized union of the premises of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Rear Window has a woman, Angela (Zoë Kravitz), afraid to leave her apartment. Why? Because she has been sexually assaulted in her past and is used to isolation in her apartment because of the pandemic, which has been her security blanket. Angela has agoraphobia and pays the bills by working from home. She reviews questions and statements flagged by Kimi’s operating system all-day, similar to Amazon’s Alexa. She rectifies questions that cause errors in the design so they won’t become problems for the user and others—even ones where someone asks poor Kimi something crude or lude.
Until she comes across a recording where a woman (Soderbergh player Erika Christensen) may have been assaulted or, even worse, murdered, named Samantha. When she brings it to her boss, he says they trash it and never bring it up again. Angela contacts a Romanian coworker. He helps her locate hidden files her boss told her don’t exist. When she listens to them, the woman again, yelling at a man named Brad, sets Kimi to open recording mode. From there, we hear the woman accusing a man named Brad of rape. There are later recordings that Kimi picks up where two assassins are hired who assault her at her door. Angela hears them unwrap the plastic, and one tells the other to watch the spray (from cutting her throat). The last thing Angela hears is the gurgling.
When Angela contacts the corporate officer, Natalie Chowdhury (Rita Wilson), she welcomes her to come to her office to call the FBI and review the tapes together, including the law enforcement agency. Of course, when she gets there, Chowdhury asks for the videos first. When she is denied, Angela excuses herself to get the Feds on the phone and be back in two minutes. However, our girl sees two scary-looking men walking intently towards her after leaving.
She runs. As they catch her with a dose of what I assume is ketamine from the tip of an umbrella, she wakes up in the bad guy’s van as they are walking her into her apartment. The wrench in the plans is a fellow agoraphobiac who has stalked Angela for a while. He sees something is wrong, comes out of his apartment, and confronts them. Of course, they stab the poor guy. Angels run for her apartment door, but a third hitman is there waiting for her. As Angela and the poor bastard are stuck on the couch, interrogating where the rest of the recordings are, Angela’s mom calls via face time on her laptop.
HBO Max original film Kimi ending explained.
This is where Kimi kicks in. Before Brad’s goons, who need to keep everyone quiet before the stock in his tech company goes public, kill them. Angela orders Kimi to answer the phone. Her mom (Robin Givens) now sees the killer’s face. Angela then tells Kimi to turn off the lights and blast some music, but loud. She runs for the back of the apartment and finds the crawl space opening in the broom closet that goes up to the home under construction.
She grabs a nail gun that she knows is there from demanding the workers stop using it and kills two killers. A third thug (another Soderbergh disciple, Traffic’s Jacob Vargas) is stabbed with his knife by our favorite poor bastard bleeding out like a stuck pig on the couch. With everyone dead, Angela has Kimi call 911 and answer the door for her gentleman caller.
The final scene shows Angela leaving her apartment without any issues. She doesn’t even wear a mask. She meets her gentleman caller at the breakfast food truck, and they embrace. She has finally found a comfortable place where her depression and anxiety do not consume her.
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