In this era of streaming entertainment, viewers’ criteria for what qualifies as a multiplex-worthy film has changed dramatically. Generally, a movie needs to be a four-quadrant trapdoor or family-friendly animated piffle (preferably with a toy or video game) to get people out of their houses. Comedies are no longer safe play, nor are adult bender dramas. Small-scale movies in general are usually seen on the couch as a distraction from the second screen. Horror films, however, are usually an exception.
Whether they’re big studio productions like “Nosferatu,” “A Quiet Place: Day One” and “Alien: Romulus,” or modest-scale indie efforts like “Longlegs,” “Terrifier 3” and “Parle -Me, “Movie buffs (mostly of the younger variety) will show up opening weekend provided the hook is delivered well. They don’t need stars, and they certainly don’t need an ecstatic early word from the critics (miserably); All they want are a few good scares, a spooky atmosphere and, if it’s a slasher film, a handful of kills.
Prestige is rarely a consideration when it comes to mainstream moviegoers’ interest in the genre, so the fact that highly regarded and Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh made his first official “presence” horror film doesn’t probably won’t move the needle Much for teens and twenty-somethings (most of whom weren’t even born when it won best director for “Traffic” in 2001). They’ll perk up when they hear the hook: It’s a haunted house movie from the ghost’s point of view – that is, the ghost is the camera. It’s a dynamite concept that fires its visual imagination, something that can’t be said about many films throughout cinema history.
What does this look like? How does this conceit work within the confines of a conventionally structured narrative? More importantly, if the audience is essentially the ghost, how do you deal with the scares?
The answer to that last question is, quite simply, you don’t. And that’s what makes “presence” such a uniquely exhilarating experience.
Presence is a ghost story after something more than fear
“Presence” reunites Soderbergh with screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote his nifty 2022 thriller “Kimi.” Koepp is best known as the scribe of A-list blockbusters like “Jurassic Park” and the upcoming “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Spider-Man,” but he’s an interesting choice for “presence.” given that he wrote and directed a terrific adaptation of Richard Matheson’s paranormal horror novel “Stir of Echoes” in 1999. Now, that The film, in which a regular working-class Joe (Kevin Bacon) finds himself in contact with the spirit realm after being hypnotized, was frightening; Indeed, it’s probably responsible for creating moviegoers for something truly frightening in “presence.”
Koepp’s plot focuses on a family of four who are eager to move to a new house following a vaguely referenced tragedy that claims the life of their daughter’s best friend. The mother, Rebekah (Lucy Liu), runs the show and prizes less for her considerable two-story charms than her proximity to a high school with a top-notch swim team on which her son, Tyler (Eddy Maday), will likely thrive. She cares less about the well-being of her daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), who is flooded with grief, so it falls to her accommodating husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) to keep the entire family unit together – which is complicated through its exploration of a Divorce in light of Rebekah’s involvement in a shady financial deal.
All of this is gleaned from the perspective of an unknown entity that floats throughout the house and seems particularly interested in Chloe. Soderbergh cleverly puts the audience on the ghost’s emotional wavelength by having him express, through his movements, his feelings of curiosity, anger and fear. His safe space is Chloe’s closet, from which he observes her blossoming relationship with Tyler’s swim team, Buddy Ryan (West Mulholland). Ryan comes as an ideal boyfriend; He respects Chloe’s boundaries and asks for her consent as they work their way toward sexual intimacy. But we can sense from the ghost’s energy that she is skeptical, if not hostile, Ryan.
If this seems more unnerving than terrifying, that’s by Soderbergh’s design. “Presence” is not there to scare you. Narratively, it is a mystery that unfolds in a conventionally structured way. What keeps it from feeling gimmicky is the ghost’s keen interest in the family, which draws us into this haunted space they inhabit. It is this quality that makes “presence” a vital work of art from a master filmmaker.
The Presence is an unusual RAD-R horror film
There’s a legitimate fear in “presence,” and it comes at a perfectly timed moment. There’s also plenty of suspense built during a visit from a spiritual medium (Natalie Woolams-Torres), a scene reminiscent of a number of haunted house films (while injecting a bit of levity into the proceedings too) . But the “presence” is more “ordinary people” than “Poltergeist”. It’s about a family tearing itself apart and leaving itself vulnerable to an evil and all-too-human force. There’s almost no violence and certainly no gore, so what’s with the R rating?
Like any domestic disturbance drama, there are more than a few F-bombs thrown throughout the film’s 85-minute runtime. And we see Chloe having sex with Ryan from the perspective of the ghost in the closet. Overall, however, “The Presence” is a deeply sad film. The only demons that need to be exorcised are those that have burrowed deep into the souls of each family member. If moviegoers leave themselves open to the film’s keen attention to character detail and, of course, its formal, subjective-camera daring, they will find “presence” a captivating experience, the kind that is best shared in a darkened theater with strangers who harbor their own ghosts, because we are all haunted.
