Review: “Presence” is a ghost story that floats above formulaic Hollywood drama

By Jay Collura     1/28/25 11:29pm

Score: ★★★★

Does any director love making movies more than Steven Soderbergh? Since 1989, Soderbergh has made 33 feature films using every genre, style, and piece of technology possible. Despite the fact he worked his way up through the independent film space to direct some of the biggest middlebrow studio films of the last 30 years (Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brockovich), he still seeks out new challenges and technologies to sharpen his craft. What other filmmakers have the audacity to film not one but two of their movies on iPhones instead of cutting-edge cameras?

“Presence” feels like a natural progression point for Soderbergh, as it directly taps into his desire to experiment and challenge his craftmanship. The set-up is simple: “Presence” is a haunted house film that is shot entirely from the perspective of the ghost. Each scene is depicted in one seamless shot that hauntingly floats between characters' rooms, allowing the audience to occupy the same spectral space as the (titular) presence that occupies the house.

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But don’t let the film’s genre inspiration (or marketing, for that matter) fool you; “Presence” is not particularly scary or haunting. The film's thrust comes from the family drama that the audience observes. “Presence” follows a family of four who move into a new house at a particularly tumultuous time.  The mother, Rebecca (Lucy Liu), is facing legal trouble at work, and the daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang), is grieving a friend who has recently passed away. Chloe’s brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) seemingly lacks empathy for both situations and Chris (Chris Sullivan), the father, has to try to keep the family unit from unraveling entirely.

Combining this grounded story and Soderbergh’s experimentation with form is a sequence of situations that are not shown but felt. You are an eavesdropper, a fly on the wall witnessing the moments in which these characters react to their troubles. You learn how these people cope with loss, grief, and anguish, even though you do not see how these emotions come to pass. Even though you occupy a supernatural position in the story, the film's stone-cold reality makes it intriguing.

This is not to say that the film is wholly divorced from its genre roots: moments of the film do lean into the “Poltergeist” of it all. The spirit does ghost things - rattling shelves, flickering lights, and moving books around. Unlike most ghost films, however, the thrills and chills do not come from these moments but instead from the quieter ones. By occupying the ghost’s perspective, you, as a viewer, feel powerless. As the characters spiral into grief, you have to sit and watch, feeling as though you are a complicit bystander just far enough removed from being able to stop what is happening.

Soderbergh’s cinematic experiment works. The audience becomes haunted by the film's reality and has to bear witness to it in excruciating detail, unable to do much to change what’s happening. This is the core concept behind many ghost stories, and it is shown off in “Presence” in a uniquely cinematic way that deserves to be celebrated.

That said, “Presence” is imperfect, even if it is effective. The script is kinda cheesy, as to be expected from David Koepp, who has written a plethora of straightforward Hollywood stories (“Jurassic Park”, “Spider-Man”). Not every thematic idea is fully fleshed out, even if the greater point is well taken by the film's end. The performances also suffer from Koepp’s style, with the brother character Tyler feeling particularly cliched.

Frankly, without Soderbergh’s ingenuity, this movie would be very straightforward and very mediocre. But the magic trick worked on me; I felt haunted by the film’s approach, and the sheer experience of watching makes the movie, hackneyed or not, worthwhile.

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