Presence (2025)
A Haunting from the Ghost’s Perspective
Presence, which is the first horror film from veteran director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean’s 11), is about a ghost who inhabits an initially unoccupied house. The spirit – which never speaks – is the protagonist of the film. We see everything through its eyes.
Soderbergh uses long takes, with few obvious cuts, to simulate the ghost moving through the house. The filmmaking style is somewhat similar to movies like Birdman. Is this a cool idea? Yes. Does it make for a good horror movie? Well…
A new family moves in to the home. There’s the mom, Rebecca (Lucy Liu), who is self absorbed and arrogant. She is apparently committing fraud at work. Her husband, Chris (Chris Sullivan), is struggling with severe anxiety due to his wife’s illegal activities.
They have a cocky teen son, Tyler, (Eddy Maday), who is a star athlete. The youngest, teen daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang), is struggling with anger, depression, and grief after her friend’s death from an apparent drug overdose.
The entity roams around the house observing the family’s turmoil. The dad is thinking of leaving. The siblings hate each other. The mom is dismissive of everyone’s feelings but her own.
Our ghostly protagonist takes a particular interest in Chloe, and spends an inordinate amount of time in her room. It has a limited ability to manipulate the living world. The spirit can move small objects and sometimes make noises.
Chloe is the first to recognize that the house is haunted. She theorizes that the spirit is her dead friend, but her mom and brother mock the notion that there’s a ghost in the house. Chloe eventually begins a sexual relationship with Tyler’s friend, Ryan (West Mulholland).
The ghost is uncomfortable with this, often hiding in Chloe’s closet when she is in bed with her new beaux. As I watched the film, I wondered why the ghost would bother hiding. After all, it is invisible to the living characters.
The family eventually invites a psychic into the home. She is unable to identity the spirit, but says that ghosts experience time in a nonlinear fashion, making it possible that the spirit is someone who hasn’t yet died.
Anyway, the ghost is right to be fearful for Chloe’s safety. Ryan is hiding a sinister dark side. He tries to drug Chloe with date rape pills, and that’s just the beginning of what this psycho is capable of. Can the ghost save her before it’s too late?
A recurring theme in Presence is the illusion of control. Most of the characters believe that they have the power to determine their own fates, but their lives are continuously upended by unexpected turns.
Soderbergh takes a fatalistic approach to the story. But then, at the end, he seems to be saying that sometimes we can intervene positively to change things for the better, even if this comes at a high personal cost.
Innovative, But Not Scary
I found the family drama and the characters’ interpersonal dynamics interesting. This movie never bored me. That said, anyone looking for chills is going to be disappointed. This movie is never scary. Not even a little bit. It’s sometimes disturbing, and the last five minutes are quite eerie, but there’s no major terror to be found.
Soderbergh has created a drama about a dysfunctional family and dressed it up as a horror movie. It’s like he sort of wanted to make a genre film but never fully committed to the idea. This is akin to dipping your toes in a swimming pool but never jumping in.
I will give credit to the quartet of actors playing the family. All of them are believable. Chloe is the most memorable. I enjoyed her mix of sadness, nihilism, affection, and hope. The dad, Chris, is the most likeable and relatable character. Rebecca and Tyler are written as the villains of the family, and they’re effective in those roles.
The ending left me with mixed feelings. I half-expected Soderbergh to keep the identity of the ghost ambiguous, so that viewers could interpret it for ourselves. Nope. Instead, he gives us a definitive resolution that isn’t particularly satisfying.
I’m sure some people would be pissed off if Presence didn’t reveal who the ghost was, but I would have preferred it. Why are directors scared to leave stuff ambiguous? Inception, for example, has a fantastic ending, and it never shows us if the top falls or keeps spinning. It would have been a weaker film with a definitive conclusion. So is Presence.
Rating
Presence is an inventive work that functions well as a family drama, but Soderbergh’s inexperience with horror is glaringly obvious.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 7
