My notes on Presence
Steven Soderbergh has always been a busy, unpredictable filmmaker – arguably, no one else currently working can work across such a wide range from initiating mainstream franchises (Ocean’s, Magic Mike) to odd indie experimenta (The Girlfriend Experience, Schizopolis) with issue-led true crime (The Informant!, Erin Brockovich, Traffic), proper mid-budget noir (The Underneath, Out of Sight, Logan Lucky) and toe-dips into science fiction (Solaris), martial arts (Haywire) or biopic (Behind the Candelabra). Recently, he has managed weird, fringe-genre suspense/paranoia items (Unsane, Kimi) but Presence is the closest thing he has done to a horror movie since his second feature (Kafka). Screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote Kimi, is another versatile, with credits on Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible films, who wrote and directed a couple of Kevin Bacon-starring ghost stories, A Stir of Echoes and You Should Have Left, which feed interestingly into Presence – a film which is at once high concept (a ghost story from the POV of the ghost) and satisfyingly on-the-nose. The simple pitch is ‘family move into a haunted house’ but there’s a lot going on between the living characters which we glimpse or have to intuit – and, as in the best ghost stories, there’s no clear, definitive explanation of who or what the ‘presence’ is.
As usual, Soderbergh is his own cameraman – which means that he plays the presence himself, wandering all around a large, unusually accessible house (doors are almost always open – unless they shut of their own accord) and peeping at the inhabitants so that the plot is doled out in overheard snatches rather than theatrical scenes. As in so many ghost stories, the opening has a slightly glib estate agent (Julia Fox) showing a family around a suspiciously affordable dream home. Rebekah (Lucy Liu) is the take-charge Mom and Chris (Chris Sullivan) the affable go-along husband, and there’s already an unsettling imbalance as the family are moving so swim team jock son Tyler (Eddy Maday) can be in an advantageous school district while daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) is perceived as difficult because she’s struggling with grief after the death by overdose of a close friend. Rebekah shows blatant favouritism for her beloved son – giggling as he recounts an anecdote about a cruel prank played on a girl at school which horrifies Chris and confirms Chloe’s gloom about the way the teenage world works.
Eventually, Tyler brings home school star Ryan (West Mulholland), who is buff and handsome and outwardly caring – he keeps telling Chloe that she’s in control – as he gets together with the girl … but is plainly more of a threat than the supernatural entity which expresses its displeasure with poltergeist activity. Why does Ryan try to dose Chloe’s drink after they’ve had consensual sex? What’s really up with Rebekah’s business to make Chris seek advice about the legal complicity of a spouse when someone is convicted? Is Tyler really as big a shit as he seems? Can the presence leave the house to which the film is confined?
Exceptionally well acted – especially by Liang, Mulhulland and Maday as the younger characters – and paced (at a trim 85 minutes), this needs to carry the usual warning for camerawork which can provoke seasickness … but Soderbergh (like RaMell Ross in Nickel Boys) does a lot more than simply shake the image or show off long takes (in fact, he uses frequent cuts to black as punctuation). There are a few parallels with the Paranormal Activity franchise, including the self-declared psychic cleaner who possibly makes the situation worse with ominous pronouncements, but the presence isn’t outright demonic – and its interventions aren’t jump scares or even creep-out moments but often (cannily) expressions of outrage and disapproval at bad attitudes or bad behaviour. This ghost doesn’t just represent the director but also the audience.
NB: not to be confused with the 2022 haunted ship movie of the same title.
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