Steven Soderbergh’s first foray into Horror has more than visual trickery up its unseen sleeves
We glide through an aged suburban house as a family of four inspects their new surroundings. Study their reactions as they take in a new idea of “home.” Watch over their shoulders as mother Rebekah (Lucy Liu) deletes large batches of incriminating work emails; father Chris (Chris Sullivan) calls a “lawyer friend” to discuss spousal incrimination; son Tyler (Eddy Maday) brags about the cruel prank he helped pull on a classmate in order to fit in; and as daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) does homework, lost in tragedy. Over long stretches of Presence’s opening moments, we do nothing but watch. Until director Steven Soderbergh reveals we’re not just unassuming voyeurs. Chloe disappears into another room, but we don’t follow–we stay, as our spectral presence rearranges Chloe’s belongings before hiding in her closet, awaiting her horrified reaction to come.
Presence, shot in secret by Soderbergh and writer David Koepp before an unveiling at Sundance last year, has a devilishly simple high-concept hook: it’s a haunted house film from the point-of-view of a ghost for the entire runtime. It’s a technical premise befitting the experimental auteur and the blockbuster scribe of Panic Room and Jurassic Park. Those expecting a dread-filled creepfest in the line of Paranormal Activity may leave Presence disappointed; those with an open mind, though, will find rewarding terrors–and surprising pathos–lurking in the shadows of Soderbergh’s first outright attempt at horror.
The most rewarding aspect of Presence is how Soderbergh and Koepp continue to evolve the nature of their shift in perspective across the film’s runtime. Even past the opening reveals that Soderbergh’s camerawork belongs to the titular “Presence,” Soderbergh and Koepp use the barebones fundamentals of screenwriting–particularly the gradual reveal of real-time information–to gradually alter the audience’s literal and emotional relationship with the film onscreen. We shift from observers and voyeurs to an invasive presence, with a delicious tension mined not from if the threat will strike this poor family, but when and how. Much like last year’s slow-burn slasher In a Violent Nature, Presence openly plays with our expectations of horror villains, forcing us to re-evaluate why we demand certain bloodshed from these films when it’s openly telegraphed that disturbing satisfaction will surely arrive down the line.
But as we study Chloe, learning more about the tragic, extremely lonely mourning she’s going through–our presence feels alien, and we instinctively want to turn away from such uncomfortable intimacy (which our closeted specter often does in key moments). While Presence does pack in a few creative scares to sate its audience, Soderbergh and Koepp’s lean 85-minute experiment is, for the most part, more a paranormal drama in the vein of A Ghost Story or Personal Shopper–exploring the emotional crux of life after death, and why we feel compelled to believe in ghosts. In execution, Presence draws you in with the promise of horror–but doesn’t reduce itself to another plain-faced “we are the monsters,” capital-T Trauma metaphor. Rather, Soderbergh’s cinematic specter allows us to see just how much this broken family keeps from one another, building a dramatic tension that’d be rewarding to watch outside of any horror movie trappings.
Rebekah and Chris are so mismatched as parents and partners, and it’s fascinating to see how each parent’s relationship with their children grows and withers in such limited space. Liu, as a headstrong and blunt financial advisor, seems to dispense affection to those who earn it–namely her swimming champion son Tyler–leaving her totally ill-prepared for how to handle daughter Chloe’s loss and grief. In a way, Rebekah relegates herself to a similar place of icy comfort as Sandra Hüller in The Zone of Interest, ignoring the suffering or gazes of those around her lest she be forced–against all odds–to take any sort of culpable action to change things and, in doing so, acknowledge her perfect world is anything but. In contrast, though, Chris Sullivan is there to sweep in from the wings as the Horror movie Dad we all wish we had. Unable to get a grip on his family’s interpersonal conflict, he still manages to be there for Chloe in her darkest moments as a vulnerable voice of validation or comfort–a tender performance that echoes the best of Michael Shannon in Take Shelter.
Watching such interior domestic drama, our place as spectator-spirit feels like an odd ghost out, the elephant in the room that, like Chloe’s grief, Rebekah’s secrets, or Chris’ inefficacy, takes up so much space despite everyone’s desperation to ignore it. Presence finds such emotional ambiguity in its characters–loving their flaws as much as their strengths–that makes our allegiance to them so difficult to pin down or categorize, yet we empathize with them on such a gut emotional level. We struggle to understand what threats face this family, seemingly find them, seemingly become them, until we come to another absolutely terrifying moment that turns us back into helpless viewers–where such unbearable tension comes from knowing what’s wrong, wanting to help–but we can only watch, and watch, and watch.
In such a dizzying amount of time, Soderbergh and Koepp transform us from spectator to invader to emotional prisoner–and yet, somehow, there are still more staggering and suspenseful forms to take.
Presence’s central conceit is far from an irresistible gimmick–it’s an essential aspect of itself, whose form eventually mirrors its ghost in a deeply unsettling search for purpose until all tragically becomes clear upon reflection.
Presence hits theaters on January 24th courtesy of NEON.
