Director Steven Soderbergh "retired" from movies in 2013, more than a decade ago at this point. Since then, he has continued to make movies in spite of himself. Some of these he has made for streaming (Kimi, High Flying Bird) and some for theatrical release (Logan Lucky, Unsane, Magic Mike's Last Dance). What his post-retirement films have in common is a questing curiosity about the process of filmmaking and a formal daring that wouldn't fly in his more commercial films from the turn of the century. He shot Unsane on an iPhone, for example, while Kimi is an update of sorts of Rear Window for the internet age. I am pretty sure that if Soderbergh wanted to command the kinds of budgets that have funded Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg in this era, he could probably do it (particularly if the word "Ocean's" is involved), but he just hasn't wanted the bother. His films have gone back to the basics, back to the kinds of films he made at the outset of his career. No big crews. He shoots and edits them himself. In his current film, Presence (2025), he goes even further than that. The camera's point of view is an actual character in the film. The conceit here is that Presence is a ghost story shot in the first person from the point of view of the ghost. If that sounds like a variant of the so-called "found footage" film, you might be justified in thinking that, but Soderbergh is smarter than that. This is more akin to the puzzle movies that M. Night Shyamalan used to make.
The story one finds here concerns the family that moves into the ghost's house. The ghost watches them from the point where they drive up to view the empty house and lives among them for the entire film. The ghost is particularly drawn to the family's daughter, Chloe, who is going through the trauma of having her best friend die of a drug overdose. Her brother, Tyler, can't relate to her and wonders why she can't just get over it. He's scornful of drug use, being a gifted and coddled high school athlete. Rebekah, their mother, is the dominant member of the family. She dotes on Tyler, doesn't understand Chloe, and is becoming estranged from her husband, Chris, because she is secretive about her business, which is apparently shady and illegal. Chris is seeking information on his own exposure should they become separated. Tyler has a friend, Ryan, who is smitten with Chloe and they begin a sexual relationship. Ryan is a creep, though, prone to drugging drinks all while telling Chloe that all the decisions are hers in her relationship. The ghost witnesses this and makes itself known by throwing a tantrum. This, understandably freaks out all involved. The family brings in a medium to determine the nature of the haunting, or if they have a haunting at all. She tells them that, yes, there is a presence, and that it feels like it has something it needs to do, and that ghosts are often confused as to when and where they are. The medium's brother solicits a fee for her causing Rebekah to scoff at her legitimacy, but Chris pays it. When the medium returns with a warning, though, Chris becomes more skeptical. Unfortunately, the medium has the right of it. Something bad is going to happen...
This is a minor film in a minor key. It's the sort of film that Val Lewton used to make, though it is explicit about the reality of its ghost in a way that Lewton never would have allowed. We see the ghost lift things and make disturbances, and since we're in its head, we understand its motives. Who is the ghost though? That's the motivating question of the film's plot. Chloe, who is the first to notice the presence, is sure it's her best friend, Nadia, her friend who overdosed. There is a suggestion that the medium knows exactly who the ghost is. The entire time she's in the house, she stares right at it. When she comes to the door for the first time, the ghost is in her way and she backs away from it, startled. Even once the film's real villain is revealed, they are revealed in a way that further obscures the question. The narrative twists on itself and the viewer should watch closely if they are to "get" the film once it lays its cards face-up at the end.
The house in this film is properly gloomy, complete with gothic fireplace with an antique mirror on the mantle. Anyone who knows ghost stories knows upon that mirror's first appearance that it will figure into the plot. The film draws too much attention to it for it to be inconsequential. "It's silver nitrate glass," one character suggests, with the inference that it's old and special. Stephen King once suggested that haunted houses reflect the people in them, and if that's true, then the mirror is the most ostentatious symbol in the movie, on that would be at home in a more maximalist film. The house isn't all Gothic though. It's a modern upper middle class house that isn't quite a McMansion, but one that suggests affluence. The setting's other main flourish is the stained glass rose above Chloe's bed, denoting her as the focus of the film, or, at least, of the ghost. The ghost spends a lot of time in Chloe's closet. The house is a real house in Cranford, New Jersey, which highlights the efficiency of Soderbergh's current methods of filmmaking. It was shot on a Sony A9 III and while that's a considerable step up from the iPhone he used to shoot Unsane, it's still not any bigger than a traditional SLR. There is no need for any further equipment, though I'm sure he may have placed his lights strategically in the space to look natural as he moved through it. Unlike other first-person films of the last couple of decades, Soderbergh doesn't indulge in shaky camera movements. The camera here glides, lending its point of view a floating, ethereal quality. Y'know, like a ghost.
Lucy Liu is likely the most famous actor in the cast, but she's hardly the center of the film even though Rebekah's shady dealings is a plot thread as red-herring (is her criminal activity going to figure in the haunting? the film asks). Chris Sullivan has been in a bunch of stuff, but he strikes me as one of those invisible character actors who you don't register when you see him in different films. The central focus of the film is the broken relationship between Chloe (played by Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddie Maday), a plot thread complicated by Tyler's weasley friend, Ryan (West Mulholland). All three of them are fine, but they don't really play like real teenagers, and Ryan seems more like a shit disturber out of a Shakespeare play (a teen Iago, maybe, or Richmond from King Lear; an agent of chaos). There is a hint mid-film that the prime mover in the haunting isn't drugs at all, but misogyny, when Tyler describes a "hilarious" prank his friends have visited on a girl at school. The ghost throws a tantrum at this, revealing itself to the entire family. That drum beats louder when Ryan tells Tyler that the victim has withdrawn from school to be institutionalized. Is the ghost a victim of teenage misogyny? It is strongly hinted.
The mechanics of the plot's resolution call into question the rules of the haunting as this film understands them. We literally see the ghost interact with the world at several points, but when the ultimate action needs to be taken, it is powerless to affect the living world? I call bullshit on this turn of events. This is a misstep in a film that up until that point has been carefully constructed. Screenwriter David Koepp has plenty of experience writing intricate screenplays--including at least one other ghost story--so it's disappointing to see him write inconsistent scenes just because the resolution of the plot demands it. The word for this is "cheating." Regardless, it's a false note in an otherwise lovely chamber piece. The film has another "because it's a movie" revelation in its last act that seems a bit much, too, but I won't spoil it for curious viewers.
I admit that I am inclined to give the film a pass on its shortcomings because it doesn't make big promises in spite of its overreaching third act. It is no more than the ghost story it pretends to be and it cost next to nothing to make. And I will admit that the film's final revelation gave me a pleasant feeling of frission at the back of my head that inclines me to forgive the scenes that had me rolling my eyes. I appreciate its formal experimentation and its minimalist economy, and I appreciate its final effect however dissatisfying I find its path to getting there. In spite of all that, this is a film that is footnote in an otherwise great career, one that is going to be forgotten as more robust horror movies appear during the rest of the year.
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