★★★★☆
“I know there’s an excellent man inside of you, Tyler. I’d like to see him soon.”
Through sheer determination, screenwriter David Koepp has turned the taboo ghost story on its head, mixing a family drama with chilling thrills, disordering the horror genre into Presence. With a modest budget of merely $2 million, bankrolled by Soderbergh and sold to the buzzworthy company Neon (Parasite, Anora), Presence is refreshingly out there in the present.
The story follows the Payne family, who have just moved into their new suburban home. The daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) has recently experienced the tragic loss of her best friend, and after a while, is convinced of a ‘presence’ existing within the house. After initial feelings of disbelief and belittling of Chloe by her arrogant brother Tyler (Eddy Mayday) and Jocasta-esque mother (Lucy Liu), the family reluctantly (except her father, played by Chris Sullivan) realise that Chloe is right.
The characters appear stereotypical initially, but as the plot grows, so do they. The performances of the family are convincing, as their domesticity is thrown into turmoil. Julia Fox (Uncut Gems), one of the few faces we see outside the family, appears in a cameo as the estate agent and plays the role of the career-driven, nubile and trustworthy woman convincingly. As for the screenplay, Koepp creates a story that is authentically freaky, but not in the way you might expect from a horror film. In Presence, the family’s relationship with the ghost is personal.
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Soderbergh’s cinematography is spectral. The camera wanders the house through a fisheye lens, which eventually translates to spectators when we realise that the whole film is shot from the point-of-view of an already inhabiting presence. The ghost allows us to observe the Payne’s home as our own. Presence is so coherent that you forget the setting hasn’t changed throughout. Granted, the film isn’t for everyone; When I left the cinema, I overheard audience members calling it “unrealistic.” But, after all, it is difficult to imagine ghost stories conforming to the bounds of realism. However, as ghost stories go, Presence successfully portrays the experience of living with a ghost by making the audience feel like they are the intruder.