Movie Review: PRESENCE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: January 24th, 2025 / 06:01 PM

Rating: R
Stars: Lucy Liu, Callina Liang, Chris Sullivan, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland, Natalie Woolams-Torres
Writer: David Koepp
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Distributor: Neon
Release Date: January 24, 2025

Usually, a good film’s style and substance work together to create a unified result. PRESENCE is a good film, with an intriguing, unusual style and solid supernatural substance. What’s most notable here, though, is that the two seem to exist almost independently of each other.

The opening sequence is a sustained tracking shot throughout a large, darkened suburban house. There’s no furniture yet, as the house is empty at this point.

PRESENCE takes place almost entirely within the house. We see everything from the point of view of an unseen entity, or presence. It often views its territory through fish-eye lens images, and moves from room to room in unbroken footage. It can manipulate objects and gives evidence of opinions, though it never speaks.

When the Payne family tours the house with a realtor, high-powered mom Rebecca (Lucy Liu) is immediately determined to purchase. She is primarily concerned with the high school swim career of son Tyler (Eddy Maday), and the house is in the district that will benefit him most. While dad Chris (Chris Sullivan) is more hesitant, Rebecca is fluent in real estate-speak and makes the purchase deal on the spot.

Rebecca is less concerned about teen daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), although Chris seems worried enough for the both of them. Chloe has been despondent over the death of her best friend some months ago, and Chris doesn’t know how the move will affect her.

Chloe is the first to realize there is a presence in the house, although it will make itself undeniably known to everyone by the finale.

What the presence wants and what it’s doing there become clear. Writer David Koepp, who has scripted a lot of blockbusters, also has plenty of experience adapting and sometimes directing screen ghost stories, including the memorable 1999 STIR OF ECHOES. PRESENCE is an original work by Koepp, with pieces that steadily fit together, and an effective, naturalistic take on the strains and intricacies of family life.

Director Steven Soderbergh elicits excellent performances from the cast, which also includes West Mulholland as a new school friend of Eddy’s, and Natalie Woolams-Torres as someone sensitive to the unseen who doesn’t use the word “psychic.”

The director also employs a flying, floating camera to suggest a presence untethered to gravity or time. It makes sense, it’s relatively novel for an entire film, and it’s technically well-executed.

But even though we get a hint at the climax of the nature of the presence, what we don’t get is any feeling that we’re connecting with the characters or the action in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise. There’s nothing wrong with PRESENCE; it’s just rare that we’re invited to consider the narrative material and the directorial approach as quite such separate elements on a single project.

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A mixture of intriguing style and good substance that never fully inform each other

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Article: Movie Review: PRESENCE

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