Rating: 7/10
Shot from front to back inside its ultra-suburban New Jersey home set, director Steven Soderbergh’s venture into the horror genre, “Presence,” is his most recent experiment with the limits of the cinematic medium.
The director’s work has long been defined, at least past the “Ocean’s” trilogy, by a willingness to play with the format’s standards — from the COVID-19-era claustrophobia of “Kimi” to the genuinely impressive iPhone cinematography of “Unsane” and “High Flying Bird.”
Played as a ghost story from the perspective of the ghost, “Presence” sticks to its conceit, with scenes presented through slow, gliding camera pushes and long, unbroken cuts.
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The naturalistic scene work plays well with writer David Koepp’s script, as sprawling “Hereditary”-esque monologues are framed with the patience they demand from the audience and the “presence” itself.
“Presence” plays out like more of a stage play than it does a horror flick, but it’s a surprisingly easy shift to get on the wavelength of.
While headliner Lucy Liu and patriarch Chris Sullivan are the respective mom and dad at the presumed center of “Presence’s” familial drama, the film’s emotional core lies with brother and sister Tyler and Chloe, played by relative newcomers Eddy Maday and Callina Liang.
Chloe is the closest we get to an audience surrogate, being the only family member who can seemingly feel the supernatural company and struggles to come to terms with it.
“Presence” is, in some aspects, a portrait of the family’s unraveling, as dad Chris and mom Rebecca struggle to reconcile with their marital differences and the recent loss of a family friend.
The titular “presence” is a mostly invisible observer at the center of these disputes, as each crack in the family’s bond is paired with the poltergeist’s nuisances, ranging from knocked-over drinks to thoroughly trashed bedrooms.
It’s arguably a positive that the film’s weak points lie outside its immediate family, as a handful of minor characters factor into the script near the second and third act. Those characters are presumably meant to offer more developed or differing perspectives on the film’s events. However, Koepp’s script ultimately struggles to work out exactly what it wants to say about its figures or the presence itself.
“Presence” also struggles as a horror movie, although there’s an argument to be made that it frankly isn’t one but rather a case of slightly misaligned marketing.
The film isn’t scary in the traditional sense. It instead derives its dread from the slow drifting apart of parents and their children, a nearly-successful observation of the empty space between mothers and daughters or fathers and sons.
Mileage may vary on what is or isn’t effective with “Presence.” But Liang and Liu’s lead performances can’t be ignored, and their synergy with Soderbergh’s camerawork makes for a modern ghost story that takes the subgenre where it’s rarely gone before.
While horror might not be the word, “Presence” carries a surprising emotional weight and is an interesting experiment at the very least.
