The best ghost stories are the ones that understand the drama underpinning the chills. After all, ghosts can’t hurt you, so there has to be something else that drives the tension. Smuggle in some gothic melodrama atmosphere, and you have yourself a ripping yarn about the past refusing to stay dead and the tragedy of loss.
Leave it to Steven Soderbergh, one of our most playful filmmakers working today. Soderbergh takes the ghost story and leans into the tragedy of most of them. Presence isn’t a horror story but a poignant look at a fractured family. But Soderbergh’s understanding that film is a visual medium adds another layer and thrusts us into the ghost’s point of view.
Throughout Presence, we see everything from the ghost’s point of view. The camerawork, also by Soderbergh, nakedly puts us, the audience, in the role of the ones haunting the family. It is his way of revealing how underneath so many ghost stories is a hint of voyeurism, of specters peeking into an unfolding drama they do not understand until the end.
David Koepp’s script faithfully structures the script after every haunted house and ghost story and merely flips how the story unfolds. Presence is a perfect example of what critics mean by saying, “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.” If it were not for Soderbergh’s exquisite and impish camerawork, Presence would be a movie we’ve seen a million times but with a game cast that would have made it likely as entertaining but not nearly as memorable.
Like all families in these movies, the family is living with frayed nerves. Rebecca (Lucy Liu), the mother, is focused on ensuring her son Tyler (Eddy Maday) has the best opportunities and ensuring her family stays upwardly mobile. Her husband, Chris (Chris Sullivan) worries that his wife might be too focused on their bank account bottom line and unnerved by how he has to remind Rebecca they also have a daughter Chloe (Callina Liang).
Soderbergh takes this family and uses the camera as the unforgiving eye. It never leaves the house, giving us a fragmented view of the family. Scenes fade to black, almost as if we can not bear to witness anymore, and characters come into the house that we do not recognize and must be introduced. The mystery of Presence is who the ghost is, but that’s the McGuffin. Because it’s we ourselves who are haunting this family, we are the ones watching, looking, praying that the characters make the right decisions and are powerless to intervene.
Koepp’s script doesn’t hide its cards; characters drop hints and conversations about mediums and spirits being out of time and place. It’s not hard to put the puzzle together and figure out the central mystery, but that’s because that’s not the point. It’s the family drama that unfolds as Soderbergh makes us feel powerless as it unfolds.
Liang’s Chloe is an introvert who senses the presence compared to Tyler, a douche-bag on the verge of becoming a very real abusive a-hole who views himself as the center of the world. “There’s a really great man inside of you, Tyler. One day I hope to meet him,” his father tells him after a fierce argument.
Soderbergh and Koepp deftly navigate the multitude of dramas between each character that would come off as soapy in any other movie. Rebecca may have committed financial fraud at work, Tyler’s friend Ryan (West Mullohand) seems both wary of Tyler and enabling him, and Chirs seems overwhelmed by the realization that his marriage is falling apart. All the while, Chloe is trying to grieve the loss of her best friend, who died of a drug overdose.
The horror for Soderbergh and Koepp is how people hurt each other. Liu, always a delight to see, has a scene in which she confides in her son that she loves him more than anything. Despite his massive ego, Tyler asks, “What about Chloe?” This remark elicits a reaction from Liu that is equal parts heartbreaking and chilling than anything in the movie.
Soderbergh’s camera drifts around, hovers, and sometimes struggles to affect the real world, all in a futile attempt to change what has already happened. It’s not a horror story but a commentary on what an audience is. In an era where audiences are under the assumption that they are as important as the creators, it’s refreshing to see a movie like Presences that seems to go out of its way to remind us that we are spectators, nothing more.
In truth, Presence works because of Soderbergh’s direction of a cast that is as game as he is. Liu and Sullivan are pitch-perfect as a couple coming to terms with the death of their relationship. I will never complain about watching Liu, and if I have a complaint, we don’t get enough of her. However, it’s Liang’s Chloe that is the heart of the film. Liang infuses Chloe with a lived-in personality. A grieving teenager, she is fighting hormones, grief, and a family she loves but doesn’t like, except her father. Without her compelling performance, anchoring the film Presence falls apart.
Along the way, Soderbergh and Koepp take great delight in hitting all the necessary genre beats. Things are going bump in the night. discussions about family members with a gift, mediums, and the tried and true people refusing to go into a room. Like all great directors, he brings in favorites for small roles before having their exit stage left. The most notable is Julia Fox, as Cece, the realtor, is the first person we see and leaves far too quickly for my liking. Yet, that’s the joy of Koepp’s script; these characters feel lived in enough that you want to spend more time with them despite them merely fulfilling the genre’s script beats.
I appreciated how Koepp’s script has a dry sense of humor. The most memorable is how Carl (Lucas Papaelias), gently urges the family to drop the small talk because his wife and medium, Lisa (Natalie Woodlams-Torr), is on her lunch break. Presence delights in its premise, giving us red herrings as to who the ghost may be. But even with the final answer, the ending reminds us who the true intruder was: us.
Images courtesy of Neon
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