Presence review

By David Dent

It’s taken director Steven Soderbergh 37 feature films to get around to handling the supernatural genre, but in keeping with his penchant for twisting genre, Presence is a haunted house movie with a difference.

Rebecca (Lucy Liu), husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their two late teenage kids Chloe (Callina Liang) and sulky Tyler (Eddy Maday) move into a large house in the suburbs; a new start possibly, as they focus on improving their daughter’s mental health following the drug related deaths of two of her friends, Nadia and Simone.

But all’s not well in the family. Chris is coming apart at the seams, on the verge of leaving the family. Partly due to poor decision making, but also because of the overly close relationship between mum and Tyler at the expense of Chloe, who starts to feel that the spirit of her dead friends have followed her to the house. And when Tyler’s druggy friend Ryan (West Mulholland) shows up, a new level of threat is introduced.

The Soderbergh twist here is that, of course, the spirits have followed the family. We follow a POV camera around the house as the family move in and are observed, even in moments that they think are private, adding a layer of vulnerability to an already fractured household. This Paranormal Activity style approach isn’t the least bit creepy, but it’s not really meant to be: Presence is more a film about how people deal with grief, but also how much of what we really feel remains hidden from others. 

As an experiment, it’s an interesting one. As a feature film, while we’re clearly in the hands of a seasoned director (Soderbergh filmed the thing himself) I’m not sure it really sustains, and the ending feels a little rushed.