Review: Presence

Image courtesy of Neon.

The title of Steven Soderbergh's latest, an experimental first-person POV ghost story, does a lot of lifting. It refers not only to the presence that is haunting the house of the appropriately-named Payne family, but the lack of presence that the family members have in each other's lives.

As the film opens, the family visits a massive, recently renovated house and quickly cuts a check. Rebecca (Lucy Liu) is behind the push to purchase the house as she believes it will enable her jock son, Tyler (Eddy Maday), to get into a good school in the neighborhood where it's located. Rebecca's husband, Chris (Chris Sullivan), seems distracted and there's an occasional reference to some possibly shady behavior involving his wife from which he appears to be distancing himself.

And then, there's Chloe (Callina Liang), the film's lead character who is in the process of grieving her best friend's death to drugs. An element of mystery is introduced when we learn that Chloe's friend was one of two young women who died similarly from an overdose and that Chloe knew both of them. 

The young woman is noticably upset and the rest of the family mostly walks on eggshells around her, although her brother is prone to occasionally insensitive comments toward her and Rebecca, who clearly favors her son, shrugs and says that the only thing that can help Chloe is time. Chris points out - and possibly accurately - that this conclusion might have to do with the fact that it enables both he and his wife to do nothing about the situation. When the atmosphere in the house isn't funereal, it's tense.

And all of these proceedings are witnessed by a ghost who lingers in the house. It's not until late in the film when we learn whether the spirit is malevolent or benevolent, but it occasionally causes a disturbance by rattling shelves or glasses and makes things fall off the wall. During one unnerving sequence, it moves Chloe's books around and stacks them neatly.

Another character, Ryan (West Mulholland), a jock friend of Tyler's from his new school, is introduced a ways into the film and he will end up playing a central role. There's a scene late in the film involving him that is particularly chilling, although it's one of the few scenes in which the film loses the tight grip it has formed because there's too much expository dialogue in the sequence during a monologue that is delivered in a manner that isn't completely convincing.

"Presence" is a slow burn and, as such, it begins slowly before ultimately building to something powerful that makes an impact. It's one of Soderbergh's more experimental efforts - like "Bubble" or "The Girlfriend Experience" - but more so in terms of style and camera work, rather than narratively. Much like Robert Altman, Soderbergh is a director who likes to dabble in genres and put his own unique spin on them. As such, "Presence" is the first movie of 2025 that I can recommend.