Film Review: Presence
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Leave it to Steven Soderbergh to help 2025 kick off with one of its most intriguing films. Presence, which hits theaters this week, is a ghost story, haunted house, familial drama, and formal exercise all rolled up in one. The film follows a family (Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday) who move into an unassuming house in the suburbs. What seems like the perfect family unit belies much strife: Chloe (Callina Liang), the daughter, has recently lost a friend to suicide and is depressed, Tyler (Eddie Maday), the son is harboring a mean streak and terrible attitude. Meanwhile Rebecca (Lucy Liu), dotes on her son, ignores her daughter, and deals with legal issues at work, a fact that is driving her husband (Chris Sullivan) to contemplate leaving. Their internal issues become more complicated when they realize that they’re not alone in their home.
Steven Soderbergh is one of our most interesting formalist directors, From the unique editing/visual style of traffic to shooting on an iPhone, he’s always doing something interesting with his films. Deciding to film the whole movie from the perspective of the ghost is a fascinating choice. There’s moments from iconic horror films where POV filming has been employed (Friday the 13th and Silence of the Lambs immediately come to mind), but choosing to make the whole movie in this manner presents something thrilling to modern moviegoers.
To this point, Presence can feel like an incredibly immense movie as it plays with composition and forces the audience to deal with our relationship to the action and the family drama. Not only is the camera deciding what we see, but an entity is also controlling us. This framing device at times helps make the performances feel even more realistic, adding a layer of unguardedness and naturalness to the proceedings. There’s so much to contend with that Presence elevates itself above most of the usual January horror fare.
However, the flip side is that Presence also feels incredibly slight, especially with the editing styled employed in the film that gives the feeling we’re cutting down to the barest of bare bones. Despite how good the performances are, I had a hard time really sinking into the narrative because any time the movie got interesting we seemed to cut to the next day. This leads to a nearly unsatisfactory ending that felt rushed, even though it felt narratively complete.
This push and pull can be felt all over the narrative. Early on as painters are getting the house ready we find out one of them won’t go in the room that will eventually be inhabited by the family’s daughter (good!). However, nearly 30 minutes later we’re presented with potential ghost powers that seem to shift whenever the movie needs them to (bad!). Soderbergh does have a clear understanding of what is making this story dramatically interesting, but Presence can’t escape failing a bit at some of its genre conventions. It’s still a worthwhile effort and a film I believe I will be pondering for a bit this year.
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