Presence, the latest film from director Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies and Videotape, Out Of Sight), is based on his real life experiences with what he believes is a ghost in his own home. Inspired by his spectral roommate, Soderbergh wrote a few pages of a script, which he handed to David Koepp (Panic Room, Jurassic Park), who finished it. The film was shot in a house in Crandall, New Jersey, over just eleven days in September 2023 (they received an interim SAG-AFTRA agreement during the strike that year). Soderbergh shot this in the ‘found footage’ style, using only one camera, with himself as the camera operator.
The result is that Presence is a haunted house story that is told from the point of view of the ghost. And it’s marvelous. But instead of the typical ’found footage’ movie, which is supposed to be culled together from film or video that is literally found after the fact, we see everything that’s happening in this house through the ‘eyes’ of the ghost, or the Presence, as it becomes known. The Presence is already in the house before the family move in.
Lucy Liu (Elementary) leads the cast as Rebekah, the matriarch, with Chris Sullivan (The Knick) playing her husband, who’s also named Chris. Callina Liang plays their daughter Chloe, and Eddy Maday plays her older brother, Tyler. When they move in, Chloe is reeling from a tragedy where she lost her friend, Nadia, to a drug overdose. Nadia went to sleep one night and never woke up. Chloe is the first in her family to notice the Presence, and she wonders--and desperately hopes--that it might be Nadia, newly returned as a ghost.
To go any further in detailing the story would risk exposing some brilliant plot twists that David Koepp places in his smart screenplay, which covers all of the angles very nicely. Koepp also wrote and directed the fantastic Stir Of Echoes, another great cinematic ghost story starring Kevin Bacon that was based on the Richard Matheson novel. So Koepp was a great choice to write the screenplay, here. And the effect of having the entire story being told through the POV of the ghost works very well, with the staging feeling like these little plays that are being performed that the Presence drifts in on to overhear.
Soderbergh keeps the story flowing at a brisk pace, while still giving all of his actors their moments to shine (which Lucy Liu does in one heart-rending scene). The film is a touching rumination on grief, but the suspense also slowly builds to a rip-roaring crescendo--all within the same location. Seeing this story from the POV of the ghost, we never leave the interior of the house. But Soderbergh, always pushing the envelope of what’s possible in filmmaking, makes it work magnificently. The result is that Presenceis so deeply suspenseful, as well as extremely affecting, that its presence will remain with you long after you see it. --SF
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