Presence is a ghost story by way of Steven Soderbergh, which means that you’ll recognize all the tropes, but it’s askew just enough to throw you off its trail. All the hallmarks of a ghost story are here: mysterious noises, unexplained movements, only a few people are attuned to something being “off,” while the others remain skeptical, creepy sensations, and general moodiness. The twist that Soderbergh and writer David Koepp put on this is that the family at the center of Presence isn’t haunted by the supernatural as much as it’s haunted by trauma, secrets, and poor communication.
The movie starts with a family moving into a new home, snatching it off the market before anyone can beat them to it. There’s Rebekah (Lucy Liu), the career-driven mother who’s likely up to some legally questionable practices; father Chris (Chris Sullivan), who has taken a back seat in his marriage; Tyler (Eddy Maday), is the cocky jock with a bright athletic future; and Chloe (Callina Laing), the quiet daughter caught in a quagmire of grief over the recent deaths of a couple friends. The family dynamics are clearly drawn: Rebekah and Tyler are birds of a feather, while Chris and Chloe are on the same wavelength. The other pairings are fractious and marked by stunted conversation and emotional coldness.
Everything we see in Presence is from the perspective of the Presence, which roams freely throughout the house, but spends most of its time with Chloe. Allowing us to see how the family acts when they’re alone adds a deeper layer of sadness to everything as the family is not doing well. They’re drifting apart to the point where they’re more roommates than anything.
Koepp’s script does a fabulous job drawing out the isolation of each character. The average ghost story would put the family through the ringer by the ghost, but in this case they don’t need any help doing that to each other and themselves. Chris and Rebekah seem destined for divorce, Tony is biding his time until he’s off to college and beyond, and Chloe is just trying to get through the fog of trauma she’s mired in.
The movie is at its strongest when letting us sit in the uncomfortable silences with the different family members, whether it’s Chris taking a clandestine phone call with a lawyer, Rebekah sipping wine and clacking away on her laptop, or Chloe doing homework in her room. Soderbergh doesn’t use any close-ups in the film, so the performances hinge on the physicality of the actors. The movie could be dialogue-free and we wouldn’t lose much, if anything.
The most startling revelation in this supernatural chiller is that the scariest thing about any home is what we bring into it. Having the Presence in the house gives the family an excuse for their miserable state, but this is a haunted house of their own creation. That becomes more apparent as the film zips along at its sprinter’s pace. That’s only amplified when the family welcomes in outsiders like medium Lisa (Natalie Woolams-Torres) or Tyler’s friend Ryan (West Mulholland). Instead of breaking the tension or taking attention away from the family’s problems, Lisa and Ryan’s presence only exacerbates everything.
With a runtime of barely 80 minutes, Presence goes by so fast that it’s hard to catch everything coming at you in real time. Between that and the choice to shoot the film in first person POV (a decision that works while also feeling more ostentatious than the similar approach for Nickel Boys), the real pleasure in the Presence experience is sitting with the film after the fact running back through everything and sorting out your thoughts. At least, that’s where I’ve found myself. I walked out of the theater a bit frustrated by the film, but now I’ve reached a point where I’m dying to go back and see it again. That’s, maybe, one of the best recommendations I can give.
