Director – Steven Soderbergh, Screenplay – David Koepp, Producers – Julie M. Anderson & Ken Meyer, Photography – Peter Andrews [Steven Soderbergh], Music – Zack Ryan, Visual Effects – The-Artery (Supervisor – Yuval Levy), Special Effects Supervisor – Devin Maggio, Production Design – April Lasky. Production Company – Extension 765.
Cast
Callina Liang (Chloe Payne), Chris Sullivan (Chris Payne), Eddy Maday (Tyler Payne), Lucy Liu (Rebekah Payne), West Mulholland (Ryan), Julia Fox (Cece), Natalie Woolams-Torres (Lisa)
Plot
Husband and wife Chris and Rebekah Payne purchase a new house and move in along with their two teenage children Tyler and Chloe. Not long after doing so, Chloe becomes certain that there is a presence in the house. She believes this to be her friend Nadia, who recently died in her sleep. There are tensions within the family, while Chloe starts to secretly sleep Tyler’s new best friend Ryan. In the midst of this, the presence in the house becomes more aggressive.
Steven Soderbergh is one of the foremost independent filmmakers in the US today. Soderbergh first appeared with Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and had Soderbergh nominated for an Oscar with his first film. For several years after, Soderbergh failed to repeat that, making the likes of Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), The Underneath (1995), Gray’s Anatomy (1996) and Schizopolis (1996), none of which seemed to set critics or arthouse audiences alight. Soderbergh then had a commercial success with Out of Sight (1998) and went on to make the acclaimed likes of The Limey (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and sequels, Solaris (2002), The Good German (2006), Contagion (2011), Haywire (2012) and Magic Mike (2012), among others. He has also been prolific producing films for other people. (See below for Steven Soderbergh’s other genre films).
The ghost story and haunted house genre has become a well-worn one, particularly during the 2000s, where there has been an outpouring of medium and low-budget efforts in the field. The more that have come out, the more it has felt like they are entries that have been cycling through the same formula, grinding it down with repetition. (For a more detailed overview of the genre see Hauntings and Ghost Stories).
Steven Soderbergh takes a novel approach when it comes to Presence. There has been the tradition of the Long Take film where an entire film is shot in a single unbroken take – see efforts such as Russian Ark (2002), Silent House (2011) and Mads (2024), among others. Presence is not quite a Long Take film, but Soderbergh uses a similar approach where each scene is a single unbroken shot – there are a total of only 35 shots in the film. I was reminded somewhat of Robert Zemeckis’s Here (2024), released nine months later. While radically different films, both take place in a similar house with the camera at a distance watching the interactions of a family unit over time. Both films also never leave the house, except for an almost identical final shot that pulls back out of the house and up into the air.
Lucy Liu in a haunted house
As gradually becomes apparent, the camera takes the point-of-view of the presence. The ghost itself is never seen until the last shot, although it is not clear if that is the same presence that has been acting throughout the film. It is suggested that the ghost operates outside of time, although you suspect if that is the case then its actions would have disrupted temporal causality in a major way, if not created a time paradox.
The viewpoint gives the standard ghost story something unusual. It is almost like a hidden camera show with the camera moving into an often unusual intimacy to show the hidden dramas and tensions within the family dynamic. Oddly amid these, it is Lucy Liu, the most recognised name among the cast, who gets the least screen time and character development. We also never get to figure out what it is that Chris Sullivan is suddenly needing to seek legal advice about. However, this leads to a particularly chilling climax where one individual reveals a highly disturbing side, followed by an even more abrupt and shocking denouement to the scene.
Presence should not be confused with The Presence (2010), which is also a ghost story but is unrelated.
Steven Soderbergh’s other films of genre interest are the fictionalised biopic Kafka (1991), the surreal Schizopolis (1996), the remake of Solaris (2002), the plague outbreak drama Contagion (2011), the asylum horror film Unsane (2018). Soderbergh has also produced a number of films, including the genre likes of the English language remake of Nightwatch (1998), Pleasantville (1998), Christopher Nolan’s remake of Insomnia (2002), the time travel film The Jacket (2005), Richard Linklater’s Philip K. Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly (2006), the ghost story Wind Chill (2007), the evil child film We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)
