Steven Soderbergh Charmingly Flips the Traditional Ghost Story in Presence
Steven Soderbergh has consistently demonstrated himself as one of the most innovative creatives in American cinema. His 2018 horror film Unsane, famously filmed using an iPhone 7 Plus, elevated the woman-in-peril subgenre with technique and style. His latest, Presence, takes on a similar experimental approach to a well-known horror story. Penned by David Koepp, who previously wrote Soderbergh’s tight and thrilling chamber piece Kimi, Presence is a darkly comic and slow-burn genre film that presents as both a haunted house tale and an exploration of a strained family dynamic—shown entirely through the perspective of its ghost.
Soderbergh and Koepp play with haunted house tropes, such as flickering lights, objects randomly moving around, and hiring a psychic to communicate with the spirit. However, they subvert their simplistic premise to deliver surprising twists. Soderbergh often serves as the cinematographer and editor on his projects, using the pseudonyms Mary Ann Bernard and Peter Andrews as tributes to his mother and father. In Presence, he continues this tradition. The opening introduces the film’s single-location, with Soderbergh adeptly capturing the sensation of the trapped ghost navigating the old suburban home—curiously peering around corners and windows, speeding up and down stairs, or hovering around the new residents.
The new homeowners in question are the Payne family, with Julia Fox making a memorable appearance as the real estate agent who seals the deal. It’s led by the emotionally distant mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu) and compassionate, concerned father Chris (Chris Sullivan), who strives to keep his family together. Their son Tyler (Eddy Maday) appears to be inheriting traits from his mother, while their daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) mourns her best friend Nadia, who recently died from a sudden drug overdose. Chloe begins to sense something strange happening in the new house, and wonders if it’s Nadia reaching out from beyond, even if the rest of her family doesn’t believe her.