The experimental concept of his new film Presence<\/em> is that it\u2019s comprised entirely of subjective camerawork, though not quite in the same way as something like, say, Nickel Boys<\/em>. The point-of-view he\u2019s adopting here, first seen moving quickly but smoothly through a very empty house, is that of a ghost\u2014the titular entity, which never leaves the confines of that house\u2019s walls. That logline makes Presence<\/em> sound like a haunted house movie, which isn\u2019t entirely accurate, but it\u2019s more of a character study, cloaked in the veil of the supernatural. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The empty house is populated, quickly, by a real estate agent (a too-briefly-seen Julia Fox) showing it to a suspiciously normal, nuclear family: mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu), father Chris (Chris Sullivan), daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), and son Tyler (Eddy Maday). We get a quick sense of who they are; Rebecca makes an offer before she\u2019s even looked at the house, because the school district is all that matters, since Tyler is a star athlete with scholarship potential. Chloe, on the other hand, is an afterthought, a depressed kid whose best friend recently died in an apparent overdose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We gather this information, and much of the rest of the exposition, solely via overheard interactions, snatches of dialogue that screenwriter David Koepp mostly manages to keep conversational. It\u2019s a real achievement, how clear and keenly observed the family\u2019s conflicts and dynamics are, especially considering those limitations. For Rebecca, it\u2019s some shady business dealings, of which she tells her son, \u201cEverything I\u2019ve done, every single thing I\u2019ve done, has been for you\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s ok to go too far for the people you love.\u201d (Oh, boy.) For Chloe, it\u2019s Nadia, the friend she lost, whom she begins to suspect is observing her from the Great Beyond, and which seems to be the case \u2014 not only for the viewer, but according to the psychic who comes in to sniff out the strangeness of the house. \u201cThere\u2019s something it needs to do,\u201d she says, glancing at the camera. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t know what.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s nothing new, within the tradition of paranormal cinema, but again, Soderbergh and Koepp are not coloring within the usual lines; they\u2019re building to something less like a traditional horror payoff than a kind of melancholy inevitability. That\u2019s teed up just as carefully as a bloodbath blowout, primarily in the character of patriarch Chris, who is played by the wonderful Sullivan with a potent mixture of empathy and hopelessness. (\u201cEverybody, everything is comin\u2019 apart,\u201d he tells a friend, in an overheard phone call, with a shrug. Relatable!) The teen dialogue is less convincing (Koepp is currently 61 years old), but the writing of a manipulative would-be boyfriend character, played with worrisome familiarity by West Mulholland, is sadly timeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Soderbergh\u2019s direction is, as ever, first-rate\u2014ruthlessly intelligent, emotionally sensitive, technically peerless. He\u2019s shooting primarily with the extreme wide angle lens that stuck out like a sore thumb when sparingly used in the otherwise excellent No Sudden Move<\/em>; it makes much more sense here, an excellent visual manifestation for the otherworldliness of its unseen main character. But this is also not some detached stylistic exercise, a point most keenly made in its closing scene, a literal howl of grief that realigns and refocuses everything that\u2019s come before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Presence” is in theaters this weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/presence2-1024x683.jpg\")
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