Presence (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

Thank God that Steven Soderbergh didn't retire when he said he would. Since returning (from not really being gone), he has continued to push the boundaries of what filmmaking is and can do while also pioneering unique approaches to storytelling itself, making such amazing movies as Logan Lucky, Unsane, The Laundromat, Let Them All Talk, No Sudden Move, and... well, Magic Mike's Last Dance, but you can't please everyone every time). I had no idea what he has been working on lately, so when I saw a new title pop up at a nearby cinema with his name attached, I got a ticket. No clue what it was about, who was in it, even the genre. Because with Soderbergh, who is so versatile in genre, in form, and in theming, I trust him to tell any story in a way that is accessible and challenging at the same time. That's just his acumen as an artist. And, true to form, here he serves as director, editor, and cinematographer, so it just feels good to be in his hands.

So when Presence started, I had no idea what was going on. It seems meant to have an uncanny effect at first, floating around a beautiful house in the dark, looking out various windows but particularly drawn to one second-floor pane that overlooks the driveway off a lovely suburban neighborhood street. Are we in the perspective of a killer, a la Michael Meyers? Soon enough, after a brief tour of the house, time jumps to day and a realtor (Julia Fox) enters in a rush; she's there to show it for the first time, and it's to a charming nuclear family, consisting of parents Rebecca (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) and children Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). The family has issues that will become apparent. Rebecca is a workaholic and almost certainly hiding criminal activity behind her ever-present laptop screen; she dotes on her son to a possibly problematic extent while ignoring or dismissing the emotional needs of her husband and daughter. Chris is a warm and gentle father who clearly needs a way out of this loveless marriage but doesn't want to damage his family. Tyler is arrogant and cruel to his family, lacking in empathy for anyone while pushing his way to the top of the social pyramid as a star athlete. And then there's Chloe, lost in a miasma of mourning her best friend, who recently died due to a drug overdose. 

The camera studies each family member in relatively brief snippets of the first part of the film, indicating a spatial, sentient presence in this house. Only Chloe looks at the camera, in her first scene, suggesting that she alone among the family can sense it. It, in turn, feels drawn to her, as if attempting to prove itself; while she showers, it cleans off her bed and puts her homework away. Rather than worrying for her own sanity, Chloe is immediately convinced it (meaning the camera and titular unidentified presence) is the spirit of her deceased friend, attempting to contact her from beyond. The entire film is shot from the perspective of this presence, allowing us access only to sporadic scenes in various parts of the house, as it curiously follows and occasionally interacts with the family. We might reasonably call the camera -- and us -- a poltergeist.

The screenplay is carefully constructed to provide new bits of information in every scene, helping pull us along in this strange new vision for a haunted house story. After all, David Koepp is one of the great writers still working after a long and accomplished career already. Chloe's family doesn't believe her until Tyler's room gets trashed by the poltergeist during a particularly nasty fight over dinner. Shocked by the blatant supernatural element in their home, they desperately reach out to a psychic, who visits and confirms a foreign presence while affirming Chloe's unique connection to the spirit realm.

The plot indeed becomes clear by film's end. I won't spoil any of that here, because this film is not about the plot so much as it is about how the plot unfolds itself with us as the intervening angel, er, ghost. Suffice it to say that, in addition to the psychic, a few other outsiders enter the house with varying responses from the presence, including a team of painters and Ryan (West Mulholland), Tyler's new best friend at school and the popular kid who takes a liking to Chloe. Despite a mercilessly streamlined plot, there are a few heavyhanded instances of symbolism in the screenplay, including a forced fascination with Chloe's middle name, Blue, the family's surname of Payne, and even the father's Christologically-inclined name. There are also heavyhanded bits of foreshadowing that almost derailed the film for me. (I also want to note, here, that the acting in this film simply did not work for me. I could access the characters, and the actors felt wooden and so naturalistic or realistic that they were usually boring to watch. It's just a style of performing I don't enjoy watching. But I do think they're all capable and skilled artists, especially Liu and Sullivan.)

But, by the alarming climax -- that comes much more quickly than expected, due to the film's shockingly brief runtime -- the mystery has been generally unraveled, and the film ends without lingering questions. Most of the symbolism and overwrought writing is just flavor for the film, not essential to its central conceit, the mystery at the heart of family drama. "Mystery" might be a stretch here, but I mean it in the classical sense of something emotionally sublime and existentially complex, not in the sense of a puzzle box to be solved and then obnoxiously broadcast on a YouTube "ending explained" video or Reddit board comment section.

Knowing the nature of the entity who is our proxy in the world of this film will not spoil anything, but it might affect your emotional approach, so we'll leave it unspoken for now. That element -- the lynchpin between story/plot and cinematic form/vehicle -- is deeply satisfying and reminded me of the genre-bending efforts of The Lovely Bones or even Silent House. And Soderbergh's cinematography really should be credited as a character, as physically active and interactive as he is in every scene. Once you know the identity and purpose of the presence, moreover, I expect an additional viewing will only deepen its impact. In that way, I might even compare it favorably to David Lowery's A Ghost Story, which I thought of more than once while viewing. Other elements are nowhere near as satisfying as I'd have liked, namely any details of Rebecca's job and the full dynamics of her marriage with Chris. But its final scenes will surely spark thoughtful and sentimental conversations (in a good way) after your screening -- about memory, loss, moral responsibility, personal growth, and even self-awareness in family dynamics, all through the eyes of our beloved departed -- so I encourage you to give this weird, clever, and almost-transcendent film the honor of your undivided attention. It deserves it. And so do you.