The camera is the ghost in Steven Soderbergh’s chillingly effective, experiential haunted house drama “Presence.” The filmmaker traps the audience in a beautiful suburban home, letting us drift through rooms with this curious being, in and out of delicate conversations as we (and the ghost) try to piece together a puzzle blindly.
Often in haunted house movies where a new family moves in and starts sensing strange things, the ghost knows exactly what they want — usually their house back. In this one, the presence doesn’t have such a clear objective. It’s more confused, wandering around and investigating the surroundings, like a benevolent amnesiac. Occasionally, though, big emotions erupt, and things shake violently.
Mostly, they go unnoticed. They observe the chipper real estate agent (Julia Fox) preparing for a showing, the painting crew, one of whom believes there’s something around, and finally the family and all the complexities of its dynamics. Lucy Liu (a delightful, wickedly funny scene-stealer) is the mom, Rebecca, a wealthy, successful, type-A woman hyper focused on the success of her eldest, a teenage boy named Tyler (Eddy Maday). The father, Chris (Chris Sullivan), is more of the nurturer, concerned about their teen daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) in the aftermath of her friend’s unexpected death.
There is a family drama transpiring inside the house, only some of which will make sense in the end. We overhear Rebecca drunkenly telling Tyler that everything she does is for him. We listen in as Chris confides to someone on the phone about a hypothetical partner being involved in something illegal and whether they still would be if legally separated. We see Tyler often with his head buried in his phone. And then there’s Chloe: Sad, rebellious Chloe, who is the only one to notice that they’re not alone. She’s had the recent trauma, after all, and soon she’s starting a thing with Tyler’s floppy haired, cool guy friend Ryan (West Mulholland). They hook up, they drink, they do drugs, and Chloe gets to escape from her own thoughts — at least for a little while. Ryan looks straight out of a mid-90s movie, he’s an angry, aggrieved kid who assures Chloe that she has the power to decide how this all goes.
“Presence” was written by David Koepp (“Jurassic Park”) off of a few pages Soderbergh put together, imagining what it would be like to be the ghost. He is that too, technically, as both director and cinematographer on the project. It’s a slow-burn experience that sneaks up on you, especially once you’ve seen how it plays out. Personally, I didn’t see any of it coming and couldn’t have anticipated the emotional wallop it would pack in the end. It’s a heady experiment that transcends the somewhat gimmicky-on-paper premise — something Soderbergh manages to do alarmingly well and regularly.
January releases aren’t often the most compelling. Aside from the annual rollout of awards contenders, it’s more often than not a dumping ground. “Presence” is a movie that I first saw last January at the Sundance Film Festival, and yet, even after a year, the chill and the admiration has stubbornly lingered in my mind, like a ghost that just won’t go away, while so many other films have simply faded from memory. It is a rare gem in the January mix.
“Presence,” a Neon release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “teen drinking, drug material, sexuality, language, violence.” Running time: 85 minutes. Three stars out of four.
