Never one to hold back from trying something new, the prolific and often experimental Steven Soderbergh has now decided to try his hand at horror in a way entirely fitting of the Oscar-winning director. While he’s made thrillers before, Presence is a straight-up supernatural horror movie taking the notion of Paranormal Activity one step further by having the audience see everything from the perspective of an invisible entity watching the home of a family. The results are pretty strong, as the filmmaking choices do plenty to create a distinct atmosphere while still letting the performers do what’s necessary to flesh out things further. The film may not be rife with scares, but the approach to the genre does build to some startling moments, and enough works in favor of Presence to keep one intrigued.
The family involved consists of husband and wife, Rebecca (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan), and their children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). They’ve just moved into a multi-story suburban home, but we can tell they are not in the best place. Rebecca works a lot and mainly focuses on her son. Chris is stressed out by the feeling of alienation within his own home. Chloe is grieving the loss of a friend to a drug overdose. We learn all this from the perspective of a spirit occupying the house. Only Chloe can feel this thing’s presence, though the entity can’t do much beyond moving some objects and messing around with the lights. But why is it here in the first place?
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While editing choices come into play as far as keeping the film moving (it comes in at a brisk 85 minutes), Presence is shot from the first-person perspective (both filmmaking tasks handled by Soderbergh, as per usual). The entity is constantly moving around the house, but it clearly puts focus on areas of interest, which eventually start to primarily revolve around Chloe. Is this entity the spirit of her dead friend? Hard to tell at first, but we certainly question the motives.
In the aforementioned Paranormal Activity movies, it was an evil force that would slowly work its way up to doing harm…after days of just messing with the people who have cameras set up because it felt like it (I guess). Presence takes its time to add more to why this thing is around and improves upon another recent “camera locked in a house” film, Robert Zemeckis’ Here. The difference is how a more grounded story emerges from the interactions in this family, even knowing a ghost is in their midst.
The film was written by frequent Soderbergh collaborator and blockbuster screenwriter David Koepp, and this is one of his more naturalistic screenplays regarding the family drama. Given the experimental nature of the movie, it makes me wonder if the dialogue was more rooted in scenes scripted with an objective in mind rather than exact text. While that wouldn’t apply to every scene, that would be all the more intriguing, given the timing involved with the camera representing the spirit watching all of them. Whatever the case, despite riding the line of frustration at times, since we know we are in a horror movie and the characters don’t, there’s solid work here.
Callina Liang is relatively new to the acting world, and given that she serves ostensibly as the film’s lead, her efforts are strong here. Leaning into being a teenage girl with issues surrounding truly unfortunate circumstances while also conveying a sense of wonder when exploring the presence that she senses is good work given the unconventional filmmaking approach. Despite being involved in much of the film, Lucy Liu doesn’t have much to do by comparison. However, her character’s apparent disinterest in anything but her son speaks to her disposition.
The most impressive was Chris Sullivan, who seemingly only has so much to work with, yet the performance feels well-rounded. Given how everyone else addresses him, you can sense how he’s feeling at a given moment. He’s not beyond using some wit to either be openly funny or critical of the behavior of his wife or kids. Soderbergh tends to find the right performers that suddenly become a bit of an under-sung gem in the scheme of things, and I was happy to see that here.
As the film reaches its latter half, pieces come together in a way I found compelling enough. Given the limitations of the film, based on our perspective, Presence is less about having detailed reasons to lay out regarding everyone involved and more of a stripped-down approach. It fits Soderbergh, who is happy to put the process on display but also eliminate anything he feels is unessential to get the emotions of a given scene across. I will say that I was happy to appreciate the thrills designed for certain moments by the time everything was in place. This may not be a jump scare-heavy haunted house movie, but the patience is rewarding, and the implications of what’s taking place play fair with what’s given.
I’m always happy whenever Soderbergh drops in with his latest project, whether it’s a star-heavy drama, a larger-scale genre effort, or something quiet and experimental. Presence feels like a nice way for the filmmaker to move away from a certain level of comfort yet still deliver on the horror genre in a manner entirely fitting of him. It’s fairly low-key in presentation, despite some tricky work to make everything seem like it’s really happening, but it delivers a refreshing take on what a ghost story can offer.
Presence opens in theaters on January 24, 2025.
