‘Presence’ review: Steven Soderbergh splits the difference in horror

The versatile director mixes understated spooks with blockbuster terror and gets it half-right with Presence.

The phrase “One for them, one for me” means when a filmmaker does one project for the mainstream moviegoing audience and follows it with a project only meant to impress themselves. Steven Soderbergh is a perfect fit for that description, going from stylish heists in Amsterdam with Ocean’s Twelve to a murders in a midwestern doll factory in Bubble the very next year. One minute he’s with Che Guevara, the next he’s with Magic Mike. It’s actually a fascinating balance between art and entertainment that Soderbergh has been managing pretty well through his 36-year career. But now, that steadiness is starting to slip.

Presence, his 33rd feature, has the presentation of an art house experiment: a ghost story shot in the first-person perspective of the ghost. Said specter haunts the halls of a suburban New Jersey home that just welcome a new family: workaholic mom Rebekah (Lucy Liu), well-meaning dad Chris (Chris Sullivan), high school cocky jock Tyler (Eddy Maday), and his reserved little sister Chloe (Callina Liang). The youngest in the family is still grieving over a recent tragedy, so much so that she starts to feel something watching her in the new house. That element starts to show itself more and more, with the family trying to figure out what it wants and how to make it leave.

A house divided.

As mentioned above, the technical aspect of Presence makes it feel like Soderbergh is trying to play with the formula of a typical ghost story. The first-person perspective is very well done with smooth camera movement throughout the house and well-placed lockdown shots during confrontational moments. It has the fly-on-the-wall feel of a documentary without the shaky cam and the stripped-down aura of a Paranormal Activity movie with some actual agency to it. Soderbergh once again proves he’s a technical wizard, changing from a standard shot to a fish-eye lens mid-shot somehow. Those elements (plus a light gothic score from Zack Ryan) all mix together for a restrained, creeping thriller.

Then Presence hits the halfway mark, and things start to shift. And I do mean right at minute 43 of its 85-minute run time. Soderbergh decides he wants Presence to stop being A Ghost Story and start being The Conjuring. The subtle hauntings start becoming haunted house rides with shaking furniture and moving items. What’s more egregious are the post-production camera effects Soderbergh throws in when the ghost starts shaking the house like an earthquake. For someone as experienced as Soderbergh, you’d think he’d think of something better than an effect teens used to use on Vine 10 years ago. Maybe the ramped-up effects in the back half are meant to distract from the limp script by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). Of all the directions Presence could’ve gone, using a Riverdale reject as a serial killer doesn’t make for a satisfying ending.

A family affair.

Not to say the entire cast is out of place here. Liang is the only one that meets the level of the title, slowly building the emotional weight of her character over time. What starts as the stock dainty daughter becomes the soul of the Presence with believable mediations on the suddenness of death and how it never leaves us. Liang sells it all with a poise and personality that’s part spacey high schooler, part world-weary traveler. Credit to Sullivan too, serving as the grounding force for Liang’s transcendent experience while also bringing a real struggle to the story of a collapsing family.

Liu does fine as the family mom-ager who’s just a little too involved in her son’s life. It’s easy to see where her lack of connection to Liang’s character is going, but the script seems to forget to have a more meaningful conclusion and leaves Liu hanging. Maday gets the shortest end of the stick from the script, playing a repulsive jerk that Soderbergh and Koepp thought deserved a redemption by the end. Sadly, Maday’s character growth is very much unearned and makes any emotional weight the movie’s climax (and its final scene) fall flat on its face. That’s not Maday’s fault, but a sign that few in the cast can’t rise above Presence trying to have its cake and eat it too.

The bottom line.

There’s about half of a good movie in Presence. The first half has a neat technical gimmick in its presentation of a restrained family drama. Then Soderbergh turns his tense tale into a corny carnival ride and it just never recovers. Despite a talented cast, Presence can’t pull off the trick of being arty and spooky at the same time. Soderbergh is definitely better at pleasing his own artsy inhibitions than fans of a good ghost story. Who knows what his next move will be, but hopefully he won’t be stuck between two worlds of cinema again.

Presence is now playing in select theaters. You can watch the trailer here.

Photos courtesy of Neon. You can read more reviews by Jon Winkler here.