Presence Review

I don’t know if it’s cool to like Steven Soderbergh anymore, but I love Steven Soderbergh. Unlike his contemporaries, Soderbergh is rarely spoken of as an auteur or someone who consistently pushes the boundaries of filmmaking. Yet he’s been quietly delivering one genre classic after another for the past decade, at a rate that is frankly, alarming.
You get the feeling at this point in the filmmaker’s career that he’s done making “important” films. We’re unlikely to see another Out of Sight, Traffic, or Erin Brockovich. Instead, he has leaned into creating a series of inventive, meticulously crafted genre pieces. His latest, Presence, continues this trend. While it may not have the narrative weight of his earlier classics, it remains a slick, visually inventive, and engaging exercise that plays with both technique and storytelling.
On the surface, this is a ghost story told from the perspective of the ghost, but at its core, it is an exploration of the unravelling of a family in their new home. Rebecca (Lucy Liu), a high-strung executive, struggles to maintain control over her job (where it is suggested something illegal is happening) and her family, especially her son Tyler (Eddy Maday), an Alpha male jock whose competitive, callous nature mirrors her intensity. Meanwhile, Rebecca’s laid-back husband (Chris Sullivan) has a gentler, but no less powerful bond with their sensitive daughter Chloe (Callina Liang). As familial tensions simmer, the arrival of an entity exacerbates the already significant fractures within the family.
MORE: READ OUR REVIEW OF WOLF MAN HERE
What makes Presence stand out from other films about ghosts is how Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp (in their second collaboration after Kimi) approach the titular presence. This isn’t a malevolent force or a dispassionate, unemotional entity. Instead, the ghost feels alive, emotive, and intriguingly complex. At various points, it seems protective or angry, and this is reflected in Soderbergh’s camerawork. Operating the camera himself, Soderbergh embodies the ghost through fluid, ever-moving shots, giving viewers a literal ghost’s-eye view. The camera glides, lingers, and occasionally jolts with frenetic energy, reflecting the entity’s emotional states, from quiet observation to distress and frenzied rage.
This technique, while initially a neat conceit, becomes an immersive narrative device. It not only brings the ghost to life but also underscores the voyeuristic nature of cinema. These moments feel reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, another meditation on voyeurism, with Zack Ryan’s sweeping orchestral score evoking the grandeur of classic Hollywood. When Chloe, the most spiritually attuned character, senses the ghost, she looks directly into the camera, and the effect is chilling, blurring the line between observer and participant. It feels as if we’ve been caught spying on something intensely private. While Kimi echoed Rear Window, Presence blends the filming techniques of Rope with the subtext of Vertigo, with Soderbergh’s trademark ingenuity.
Soderbergh has described the film as “the simplest idea [he] ever came up with,” but that simplicity belies the technical sophistication on display. The film plays like a cross between A Ghost Story and In a Violent Nature, offering a fresh perspective on the ghost story genre while serving as a commentary on the voyeurism of filmmaking itself, a literal embodiment of the idea that the camera is always watching. By fully committing to the ghost’s perspective – avoiding cuts to close-ups or shifts to more conventional viewpoints – Soderbergh creates an experience that feels both innovative and thematically rich.
While IT plays with supernatural elements, its real strength lies in its portrayal of familial dysfunction. Rebecca’s obsessive, almost oedipal attachment to Tyler contrasts starkly with her emotional detachment from Chloe, creating a dynamic as tense and haunted as the house itself. The relationships feel authentic and raw, helped by the incredibly natural, candid performances from the cast, which ground the film’s more fantastical elements in relatable human drama.
The pacing is deliberate, much like Kimi. Soderbergh and Koepp take their time establishing the family dynamics before ramping up the supernatural stakes. The climactic sequence is beautifully executed; an uninterrupted shot that immerses the viewer in the action and showcases Soderbergh’s technical mastery without ever veering into self-indulgence. Yet, for all its visual mastery, it ends so suddenly that the scene loses some of its impact.
Similarly, the themes of familial connection and the nature of ghosts are tied up too neatly in the final scene, undermining some of the emotional weight, not to mention the unsettling atmosphere that the film painstakingly builds in its first half. The convenience with which the narrative threads coalesce feels like a consequence of the short runtime, and the abrupt ending leaves you wishing for more room to let the story breathe.
That being said, Soderbergh is incapable of making a film that isn’t entertaining, and Presence is no exception. It’s a fascinating addition to his late-career genre phase, combining his discipline as a filmmaker with his relentless experimentation within the medium, and an almost meta playfulness. Though it has some flaws, it’s an inventive take on the ghost story, and a potent reminder of Soderbergh’s ability to craft engaging, innovative cinema.
★★★★
Presence is in cinemas from 24 January / Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday / Dir. Steven Soderbergh / Neon / 15
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