In ‘KIMI,’ Soderbergh, Kravitz build a classic tech thriller

Steven Soderbergh loves a good thriller—most people do, he knows. But he’s always conscious of making sure that whatever it is, it isn’t just “single use plastic.”

“It’s got some aspect to it percolating underneath that keeps it from being completely disposable after you’ve watched it,” he said.

Needless to say, he was especially happy that the timing worked out for “KIMI,” a classic, edge-of-your-seat thriller about a home assistant device that records what may have been a murder and the tech worker (Zoë Kravitz) who hears it. It debuts Thursday on HBO Max.

Screenwriter David Koepp (“Panic Room”) had floated the idea years earlier after reading about the debates over whether Amazon Echo recordings could be used as evidence in crime cases. The script, which he wrote early in the pandemic, had shades of “Rear Window,” “The Conversation” and “Blow Up,” and was irresistible to Soderbergh.

“Thrillers allow you license to do things stylistically that you can’t really get away with in a straight drama or a comedy,” he said. “It demands a sort of bravura visual approach because that enhances the story.”

He even helped design the device.

“I rarely have specific design ideas. But for whatever reason a shape occurred to me” he said. “I took one of them home with me and I have it at the office as a memento.”

But this film he knew would live and die on its main character, Angela Childs, a prickly, agoraphobic analyst with her own personal traumas who the camera is on most of the time. Kravitz was not someone he knew personally, but he’d been of a fan of her work for a while, especially in “High Fidelity.”

“I was convinced early on, that’s a movie star,” he said. “There’s a specific challenge in having one person dominate the...