YNOT at the Movies

After premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival, the acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh's horror drama "Presence" (USA 2024 | 85 min.) finally comes to theaters this coming Friday. In this refreshing take on the supernatural thriller genre, he presents the entire narrative through the perspective of the haunting entity to examine themes of grief, connection, and the lingering impact of loss.

At the heart of the story is the Payne family, each member grappling with their own struggles and unspoken pain. Rebekah (Lucy Liu), the commanding matriarch, is both controlling and vulnerable, while her husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) often retreats into quiet sensitivity. Their teenage children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang), embody opposing dynamics—Tyler, a brash and entitled athlete, and Chloe, a mourning teenager searching for meaning after tragic losses.

After the family moves into a century-old house next to a busy road, Chloe begins to sense the presence of a spirit in her closet. While Rebekah and Tyler believe it must be Chloe's grief at the loss of her friends, Chris makes every effort to be more understandable. When Tyler's friend Ryan (West Mulholland) meets Chloe, the two quickly build a bond over shared vulnerabilities and find comfort in each other. However, the elusive ghost in the house seems to know everything better than anybody in the house and serves as a poignant unseen guardian to Chloe.

The director Steven Soderbergh, also the cinematographer, uses the point-of-view (POV) approach in most of the scenes, as if we are navigating a virtual tour inside the house, but only from the perspective of the ghost. The camera, acting as the eyes of the ghost, moves with an almost sentient fluidity, gliding silently through hallways and rooms, pausing to linger in corners or hide in a closet. It transforms the audience from passive observers to active participants, allowing us to experience the story as if we were the unseen spirit. It provides a tense, gripping, and unsettling experience inside this haunted house without relying on traditional jump scares. It creates a sense of omniscience, as though the audience is privy to secrets and emotions the characters themselves are barely aware of.

Because the ghost must stay inside the house for some reason, the entire film is confined inside the house, until the very last shot, the door is open and we get to see what the ghost's house looks like. But how and why the ghost chooses to stay in this house, and a few other details about the story are left unexplained or ambiguous.

The haunting is less about terror and more about curiosity and understanding of the invisible forces that shape our lives and the connections that persist even in absence. The film is not just a ghost story, it is a poignant reflection on loss, memory, and the unseen threads that bind us.

"Presence" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, January 24, 2025.