Like when culinary creatives mush two disparate foods together, “horror movie told from the ghost’s point of view” is one of those conceits that could be delish or disgusting. Going in, it was straight-up 50/50 whether the first-person perspective would be a savory delight or a vomit-encouraging platter of custard mixed with beef. That’s probably something British people already serve in real life, isn’t it? Is that what spotted dick is? Don’t tell me. Well, it turns out that director Steven Soderbergh’s “gimmick” is a tasty treat! It’s just everything else that tastes awful.
To keep the food metaphor going for just another tick, writer David Koepp’s scripts come in two flavors: the original Jurassic Park and Tom Cruise’s The Mummy remake. Much more the latter than the former, the big reveal in Presence caused me to stifle a laugh so hard that something popped inside. It was a stupendous stifle. Not all his fault though, as multiple wildly awful performances suggest that maybe Soderbergh needed to do a little less “bein’ a spooky ghost behind the camera” and a little more “telling performers to do a better job.”
After her friend tragically died, Chloe (Callina Liang) and her mom, Rebekah (Lucy Liu); dad, Chris (Chris Sullivan); and brother, Tyler (Eddy Maday), move into a house that’s already very much occupied by an invisible resident. Rebekah is obsessed with her son to a degree where, for at least one scene, you think a ghost is about to see a full-on Oedipal no-no. She’s also doing some unspecified crimes. Chris is worried about Chloe, because he loves his kids evenly like a big weirdo.
Tyler is trying to be cool at school, doing “pranks” that are just acts of cruelty. This is what YouTube and TikTokking hath wrought and taught. Tyler befriends or gets befriended by Ryan (West Mulholland), who very quickly lusts after Chloe. Their courtship progresses under the watchful eye of our unidentified poltergeist, who soon begins doing poltergeisty business. You know, knocking juice over, tearing posters off of walls, and giving a psychic the family brings in some hardcore heebie jeebies.
The mystery embedded in the film is identifying who the ghost is and what they want. The answer to that is so, so incredibly stupid. It is the kind of stupid where there’s no way it could have come out okay using all the story elements involved. Making things worse is the fact that virtually everyone but Sullivan is just…off in their delivery. The clever camerawork could have made the haunting feel “real,” but only Sullivan goes for anything near authentic. Everyone else is on a sub-community-theater level, including the normally fantastic Liu.
Soderbergh gets an A for his cinematography work and a D- for his actual direction. Any time he makes another film, it’s an excuse to marvel at his stunning filmography. It’s huge and peppered with so much spectacular stuff that he’s more than earned the right to try stuff like this. Who would have thought that Presence’s potentially pretentious premise would be pitch perfect but the plot and performances would plummet the picture?
Grade = C-
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Manuela Lazic at Little White Lies says “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.”
Liz Shannon Miller at Consequence says “The scope of Presence remains small and intimate throughout, in a way that really makes you appreciate Soderbergh’s craft, especially his attention to detail.”
Hoai-Tran Bui at Inverse says “Presence falls very much under the umbrella of ‘experimental Soderbergh’ playing with form in a way that’s brazen and bold, even if it doesn’t always work. In many ways, it feels like a return to his early independent movies and its slightly sleazy twists, coupled with the fascination with the digital world of his late-career films.”
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