Soderbergh’s Presence poses as a haunted-house thriller but instead delivers a raw, unsettling meditation on grief and perspective—placing viewers in the ghost’s eyes for an unnervingly intimate ride.
Remember the trailer for Presence, touted as Ocean’s Eleven franchise director Steven Soderbergh’s first ever horror movie? We drift through a classically haunted colonial revival, spying on a family of four as two voices ponder the nature of grief. “What’s it like?” one disembodied voice asks. A girl answers, “It’s scary … like the world cracks apart. …You fall into this hole … and you can’t get out.” The teaser goes out with a bang, cutting swiftly between flashes of a home on the verge of cracking apart, everything shaking like an earthquake, lamps flickering, people running. It ends with a teen girl reaching out to touch the smudged, antique mirror sitting above her living room fireplace. Just before she makes contact with the other side, a title screen lets us finally catch our breath. That trailer got me to the theater with a quickness.
That trailer was a lie.
Turns out even Soderbergh doesn’t consider his “ghost story” to be scary, but no one told me. Sitting in the dark theater in the winter of 2024, I found myself waiting for my heart to skip a beat. Waiting for the inevitable embarrassment of succumbing to a jump scare, gasping or crying out, then giggling. It’s why I love the genre. So be warned that in Presence, the cathartic release of experiencing spine-tingling terror in a safe, popcorn-filled cinema never comes.
Yet I still find this beautifully imperfect psychological drama to be one of the most haunting films in recent memory—one that expertly breaks down the supernatural horror genre’s most familiar conventions, archetypes and iconography to make them dang near unrecognizable. A film that offers horror audiences the greatest shock of all at the very end.
Let’s start with the most basic convention Soderbergh subverts. It’s a simple plot, which you’ll see play out in classics like The Amityville Horror, The Shining, Poltergeist, Insidious and The Conjuring. A loving “all-American” family moves into a haunted house. Only one semi-creepy kid believes in the conspicuously sinister spirit. Dark forces nearly tear the family apart until they confront the mystical entity and (most often) win. Without giving away any of this film’s most subtle twists, let’s just say Soderbergh’s absolute commitment to realism subverts the typical plot structure at every turn.
Instead of a clan of happy, WASPy suburban catalog models, our family of four features a bitchy Asian American tiger mom (Lucy Liu’s Rebekah with a K), sad sack dad (Chris Sullivan’s aptly named Chris), a teenage boy who thinks revenge porn is hilarious (Eddy Maday’s Tyler), and a depressed, promiscuous girl whose bestie just died (Callina Liang’s Chloe Blue). None of them are entirely likable or even interesting—which might be why our main character isn’t a creepy kid, the courageous mom, or even the archetypal final girl. The MC is our camera, played by Steven Soderbergh himself (or Peter Andrews, as the director likes to pretend).
In most horror movies, the ghost is an antagonist. A loud noise. An invisible hand threatening to kill us. In Presence, we are the ghost. We see only what it sees. Know only what it knows.
The mystery isn’t so much when the family will realize the ghost is real and fight back. It’s when will the ghost realize its purpose so we know why we’re stuck here. Can being caged in one point of view with a family who argues about nothing and everything veer into boredom? Yes, for some it could. For me, the slow realization that this would be unlike any other haunted house movie I’d ever seen became more fascinating every passing minute.
Some critics call Soderbergh’s cinematography a gimmick. I argue that his innovative techniques are far deeper than any marketing ploy. In most horror flicks, a POV shot is code for now the bad guy is coming for us. Here, it is us. Suddenly, the shaky camera becomes as mundane as becoming a ghost might actually feel. An everlasting existence without a body that feels, moves and thinks in real time? No thanks. But for 84 minutes, it’s a real trip. So we don’t get to experience the drama of cutting to a closeup when our bereaved Chloe cries, missing her best friend Nadia. We mourn the montage that normally clarifies how much time has passed. We are set adrift, floating on dollies and cranes in long takes that often lead to the everyday chores and complaints we didn’t choose to spend forever with.
The film’s cinematographer and editor (both Soderbergh) create a cinematic experience unlike any other, letting scenes jump from one to another without any formal transitions or sense of grander purpose.
We see that the parents have financial troubles. That the tiger mom loves her son more than her husband and daughter combined. That the social-climbing brother has a new popular friend, Ryan (West Mulholland), who makes him feel as though he’s “finally getting somewhere” in high school. Sure, as an incorporeal spirit, we might occasionally reorganize Chloe’s textbooks, or open and shut a door with our invisible hands.
But without the typical sound swells and linear plot devices, it’s just another aimless day in the afterlife. You’ve heard of the banality of evil? This is the banality of eternity. And it plays upon an entirely different fear than most supernatural lore. It forces upon us the confusion, unease, dread and—eventually—the gut-wrenching fear that we will all know what it is for the world to crack apart. For us to fall into a hole and never get out. It’s akin to what grief feels like for us, but somehow worse.
If this sounds like a stone-cold bummer, I have good news: By the film’s midpoint, the family interacts more with the presence invading their home. They start asking questions. They call a psychic. Everything you need to understand the rules of our unique ghost is in this scene. Even with our obligatory spiritual medium, what makes this fun is a cinema verite approach that flips the familiar on its ass.
Despite being trapped with a family as painfully unidolized and idle as the Paynes, their final chapter might ultimately shock your nerves and rip your heart out—just not for the reasons that made you want to watch in the first place.
See for yourself by tuning into the Presence on Hulu. You can also rent the film on Apple TV or Amazon Prime.
Presence is available for streaming on:
Great Job Alex Chew & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
