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.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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