Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: David Koepp
Stars: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Julia Fox
Synopsis: Showcases a suburban house inhabited by an mysterious entity.
After the world premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s secret film, Presence, legendary actress Lucy Liu said the multi-hyphenate filmmaker has given other filmmakers a new canvas to work with. It should be no surprise, considering that time and time again, Soderbergh has devised ways of turning even the most simple or trite ideas into experimental masterpieces. When the spy genre seemed to have turned stale, he made Haywire. In a time where COVID movies were coming out left and right with nothing meaningful to say about the shared experience, he gave us Kimi. For over 35 years, Soderbergh has redefined his style so much that his most observable style has become the essential breaking down of previous films of his. With each new project he decides to take on, his audience knows that, at the very least, not a single thing will be phoned in. There is a clear purpose behind every decision, and that can be felt from the opening shot of Presence.
Brilliantly, with a single camera move, Soderbergh pulls his audience into the empty house wherein the rest of the film will take place. He lays the cards right out in front of us, and when we take the bait as he intended, we’re immediately taken when we realize he never attempted to hide his hand. On the contrary, Soderbergh brings the audience in on the very ground floor so as to set the guidelines by which this film will continuously operate. Screenwriter David Koepp described how he admired the commitment to creating a set of arbitrary rules which would create a sense of confinement. And it’s within these very rules that Presence soars to newfound heights. Yes, at the end of the day, this is just a ghost story. But rather than just have his audience watch characters operate along their set paths on a screen, the POV used pulls the audience into the home experience alongside this family of four. All in all, it makes for a more enriching experience, on top of the experimental movements just working like visual gangbusters. And of course, Soderbergh was the camera operator on this film. So not only did he conceive of a fascinating new angle with which to address this sub genre through, he made sure to be the first one doing it. (He also edited the film, but who’s counting at this point?)
At one point in the film, Chris (Chris Sullivan) sits down to tell his daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang), that there is still mystery in the world. There’s certainly plenty of mystery behind the family which Presence quite literally follows. Pretty much every scene of the film either ends a few seconds too short or bleeds into what one could imagine is a new scene, before also cutting away abruptly. It’s a reminder that these characters, while we begin to get a general sense of the family dynamic, are indeed unknowable. These fleeting moments we see through the eyes of the presence are not enough, yet sufficient in eliciting the ideas Koepp and Soderbergh seemingly want to achieve. If we’re to believe we are part of the presence itself, we can never access the whole story. Admittedly, it can be a bit frustrating at times, but it works in retrospect with both the finale and the rules set up midway through the film.
Smartly, Presence, while operating on the idea that ghosts do exist, posits they are also still unknowable. There are a handful of possible interpretations to glean from the events that occur in the film. And even at its most frightening, there’s something deeply comforting sitting at the core of the sheer fright that’s imagined. For example, there’s one element of the film that Soderbergh repeatedly teases his viewer with. Everytime it occurs, we get closer and closer to seeing a cinematic reveal. By the end, we discount it as a possibility, until in the final moments when it does occur. Soderbergh intentionally uses cinematic curiosity to his benefit, and when he finally drops the curtain, it’s blood-curdling in its raw effectiveness. There’s such an innate understanding of the relationship between film and audience in Presence that it feels rather easy to look past the occasionally overly dramatic teen dialogue.
With his ninth film in eight consecutive years, and over 30 features to his name, Soderbergh once again confirms my belief that he is not only the hardest working filmmaker in the world of cinema, but he has been for a while. And he shows no signs of slowing down. We should all simply be grateful that there’s still filmmakers at his status who are willing to take big swings, and in the case of Presence, pay off. One can also imagine this film will inspire a slew of films that attempt to capture a deeply immersive, VR-style POV. Whether they will just be used as a gimmick or cheap imitation is now in the hands of the rest of cinema.
Presence celebrated its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the Premieres section. It has been acquired by Neon, and will presumably release in theaters in 2024.
