Presence review – an enjoyably swift chiller

Perhaps reflecting the current dire economic climate, several filmmakers have lately turned their cameras to real estate and the role it plays in our lives. Like Robert Zemeckis’s Here, Steven Soderbergh’s Presence takes place entirely in a single house, with discussions around the purchase of the building part of the story in both cases. Unlike Here, however, Soderbergh’s enjoyably swift chiller demonstrates genuine curiosity towards its occupiers and the choices they make through difficult circumstances. Although supernatural, Presence is the more grounded and compelling of these films.

Soderbergh has been playing with form, technology and independence for a while: he shot High Flyin Bird on an iPhone and several of his latest projects were released directly on his website. Zemeckis has made extensive use of the possibilities of CGI, decades ago in Forrest Gump and recently in Here (which also employs AI), but Soderbergh’s experimentation is of the tangible, almost DIY kind, recalling at times the earliest practitioners of the medium. The entirety of Presence is shot from the point of view of, indeed, a presence in the house as it observes the family who just moved in, made up of a couple and their two teenagers.

Through a series of smooth long takes reminiscent of the test steadicam footage shot by Garrett Brown, the inventor of this technology, in 1974, our mysterious surrogate floats around the property, listening in on the private conversations of a family with its fair share of secrets. ​“It” soon focuses its attention on Chloe (Callina Liang), still dealing with grief around a schoolmate who recently died in her sleep. But this may be a rather friendly ghost, and if it takes an interest in the teenage girl, it seems to be only because she can feel it watching her.

Borrowing from the Gaspar Noé playbook, Presence hauntingly cuts to black to create ellipses between scenes, and the film’s atmosphere,unsettling and playful in equal measure, recalls that of Climax: we remain unsure at all times of whether the ghost will intervene, or the drama will come from the family itself. The ghost perspective allows us to be privy to things the characters are hiding from each other, to both dramatic and comedic effect. Chloe tries to keep her loneliness and sorrow to herself, while her father Chris (a very funny and touching Chris Sullivan) struggles with his commitment to stay by his wife’s side for better or worse.

Soderbergh also reminds us how much of his talent lies in his sense of humour: when Rebekah (Lucy Liu), the alpha businesswoman and mother, tells Chris she’s dealing with a virus on her laptop, Soderbergh (who handled the editing and cinematography himself) leans over her shoulder, revealing her deleting compromising emails en masse. What becomes most interesting about Presence is its living protagonists and their dynamics, rather than their silent observer.

Written by veteran screenwriter David Koepp, the film walks a tight line between both realism and mysticism, and drama and comedy, as the family faces up to the possibility that their house might be haunted. The addition of another intruder pushes things further into genre territory, yet in a surprisingly grounded way: live people can be the strangest creatures. Although its finale is a little awkward, Presence is refreshingly light on its feet even as it dives into the muddy waters of family relations and the afterlife.

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