US | 2024 | Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Logline: A family becomes convinced of a supernatural presence after moving into their new home in the suburbs.
Steven Soderbergh is an anomaly of sorts; a fiercely independent filmmaker dancing with the Hollywood devil in the pale moonlight. He’s constantly working and driving the mainstream medium forward through the often-stagnant waters of Tinseltown, operating like a lone maverick, yet playing with all the big kids and finding ways to say, “Hey, come check this out, it’s something different!”
His first feature, Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) essentially launched the indie boom of the 90s, and after delving across several arthouse features, he re-appeared on the mainstream circuit shooting from the hip and kicking huge goals; Out of Sight (1998) wowed critics and audiences by tackling well-worn genre tropes with a fresh and invigorating style. He’s continued to keep a mostly exciting, progressive edge, and one of the chief reasons behind this is that he found a bulletproof way to maintain control of his artistic vision: shooting and editing his own features (under aliases, due to US union rules). There are other established, contemporary directors who shoot and edit their own films, but none as prolific or successful as Soderbergh has been.
The latest Soderbergh experience is in a sub-genre he hasn’t worked in before: the supernatural thriller. He’s dabbled with psychological horror, in Unsane (2018), but this is the first time he’s crossed over completely into the realm of spirits and ghosts (although his 2002 remake of Solaris is a kind of ghost mutation). But Presence is no ordinary ghost flick, it’s yet again Soderbergh playing with convention and perspective, with form and function. The content is well-worn, yet the presentation is novel. It’s a shame then, that its intention is nowhere near as effective as it thinks it is, or as transparent (pardon the pun) as it wants to be.
A family of four move into an old, but beautifully restored multi-storeyed home. There’s troubled teen daughter Chloe (Callina Laing), struggling to cope with the sudden, tragic death of her best friend, Nadia, and there’s her smug and arrogant older teen brother Tyler (Eddy Maday), who is the apple of his mother’s eye. Their parents are navigating a divide of their own, with Rebekah (Lucy Lui) preoccupied with her corporate work and her son’s sporting and academic achievements, and Chris (Chris Sullivan) seemingly adrift from his own career and at emotional arm’s reach from his wife. Yet, neither of them seems to know just how to steer their daughter through her grief.
Chloe is the conquest target of Ryan (West Mulholland), a high school mate of Tyler’s. Tyler is none-the-wiser on his buddy’s secret agenda. But there is another secret observer. A roving point-of-view established right from the very start of the movie. This viewpoint floats through the house effortlessly, watching the family, peering from around corners, on occasion leering closer. All the time unseen by the family. But Chloe is aware of something - a presence. It becomes quickly apparent this POV is a ghost’s perspective, and the entire movie is being viewed through its eyes.
Soderbergh shoots the film with a wide-angle lens and tracks from a Steadicam (or some other gimble device). But while this provides a smooth, immersive visual experience for the viewer, the movie ultimately lacks any emotional engagement. There is no real urgency or any of the usual thrills one would expect to find in a supernatural thriller. Of course, part of this is to do with the fact that the camera IS the ghost, so the closest the viewer gets to witnessing any eerie, spooky shenanigans is when the ghost uses its telekinetic ability to gently close a door, or knock a glass off a table, or collapse a shelf. Yikes! Not.
WARNING! SPOILER ALERT
There are a couple of crucial moments when the ghost attempts to grab one of the family members’ attentions and the POV pulsates violently in close proximity to the human. Other than that, the central role of the narrative – the presence – is entirely silent and does nothing but watch, while the family relationships - and the antagonist - ebb and flow.
On the surface Presence presents itself as a riff on horror’s found footage format, but it’s essentially a drama, and a mostly sedate one at that; a fractured family viewed through the eyes of a timid ghost seeking closure. The ghost does precious little to interrupt the behaviour of the family its viewing, and so, the viewer is denied any real scares, because this restless spirit is not malevolent. It’s barely reactionary, let alone interactional. It mostly hides in Chloe’s closet, watching as she reads, does homework, or tries to sleep. There is menace in the form of Ryan, but it’s unconvincing.
David Koepp’s screenplay has several glaring script inconsistencies, especially a lack of continuity between what Chloe can see (or not, as the case may be) and what Rebekah eventually sees. But what bugged me the most, and what kept me from ever feeling properly engaged with the storytelling, was that I felt like for the entire movie I was privy to an extended actor’s workshop or inside a rehearsal space. The performances feel self-conscious, staged, even from veteran Lucy Lui.
It’s hard to determine exactly what kind of film Soderbergh is making, because it isn’t effective as a supernatural thriller, and it isn’t very affecting as a family drama either. Most glaringly, the dramatic plot device of character Ryan almost seems to be from some other movie, something much darker and more insidious.
When the movie’s climax finally occurs, it impresses on a technical level (“How’d they do that trick?!”), but nothing else. The epilogue is ineffectual and feels rushed, other than suggesting Nadja’s ghost has achieved a kind of closure and can leave the house, to be replaced by another ghost. But because we never really knew the ghost in the first place, and because we don’t really care about any of the family members, the ending is left hollow. Soderbergh has been so caught up experimenting with form and function, he’s failed to actually make something that holds together, something that is memorable, instead ending up with something dull and mediocre.
Presence is released in Australian cinemas from February 6th and distributed by Rialto.