‘Presence’ Review
Stars: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Julia Fox, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland | Written by David Koepp | Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Director Steven Soderbergh comes out of self-imposed retirement once again for this engaging and effective ghost story, shot in a series of single takes. From the haunted house-style set-up, audiences might be expecting something along the lines of the Paranormal Activity franchise, but Soderbergh has something else in mind.
Presence begins in a renovated, 100-year-old home, in the leafy suburbs of an unnamed city. The titular presence is a ghost, represented by the subjective, point-of-view camerawork. In the opening scenes, the presence looks out of the window and then goes down the stairs as a late-arriving realtor (Julia Fox, in an extremely brief cameo) shows a family – mother Rebekah (Lucy Liu), father Chris (Chris Sullivan) and teenage kids Chloe and Tyler (Callina Liang, Eddy Maday) around the property.
Shortly afterwards, the family are all moved in, and Chloe becomes convinced she can feel a presence in the house, believing it to be the ghost of her recently deceased friend, who apparently died of an accidental drugs overdose, just like another girl at her school. Things take a turn when Chloe begins secretly sleeping with Tyler’s friend Ryan (West Mulholland), which causes something of an uptick in the presence’s paranormal activity.
The camera perspective effectively means that Soderbergh is telling the story entirely from the ghost’s point-of-view, giving the film a refreshingly original feel for a haunted house movie. Without giving too much away, that means that Soderbergh is able to create impressive tension by having the ghost see things that the other family members don’t see.
To that end, although Presence isn’t really a scary movie in terms of jump scares or the sort of creepy something-in-the-room moments that made the Paranormal Activity franchise so popular, it does deliver genuine chills – it’s just that those chills come from all-too-human behaviour, which, if anything, makes them even scarier.
Shooting the film under his usual cinematographer pseudonym Peter Andrews, Soderbergh tells the story in a crisply economical fashion. There are very few close-ups, for obvious logistical reasons, but he manages to draw the audience in through the family dynamic, which is both messy and interesting. For example, Rebekah clearly favours Tyler over Chloe, while Chris is much more sympathetic to his daughter, and he’s also dealing with the fact that Rebekah appears to have done something less than legal at work, which could put the entire family in trouble.
Newcomer Callina Liang is excellent as Chloe, giving her a number of relatable layers that make her feel like a rounded person. Similarly, Lucy Liu is nicely cast as Rebekah, playing her as borderline oblivious to everything except her precious son. There’s also strong support from West Mulholland, whose deeply creepy manipulation techniques with Chloe paint him out as an obvious wrong’un right from the start, to the point where the audience starts hoping the ghost realises what a creep he is, even if Chloe doesn’t.
In short, Presence is a tightly scripted and impressively directed ghost story that wrings tension and dread from unexpected sources.
**** 4/5
Presence is in cinemas now.