Ghost stories are nothing new to horror films. Everybody has seen a movie about ghosts. “Presence” knows this and challenges the audience’s understanding of what a haunted house movie can be.
Cards on the table, I don’t know if “Presence” is a very good movie. Director Steven Soderbergh — of “Ocean’s Eleven” fame — crafted this single-location movie on a tiny budget. Therefore, some of the performers don’t quite carry the weight of the 80-minute narrative. Some incredibly clunky lines of dialogue from the film’s central human antagonist also greatly drag the film down in its last act.
That said, I had a blast experiencing this in a theater. The film opens with the sale of a gorgeous home to a seemingly typical family. Early on, though, it becomes clear the daughter — played by Callina Liang — is struggling through the major loss of her best friend.
Family politics are at the heart of “Presence,” and we experience them all through the eyes of a ghost who is unsure of why it is haunting the home. To be clear, the ghost isn’t a character that speaks. Rather, the camera adopts the perspective of the ghost’s eyes.
To negate the need to cut, the ghost has a sort of resting spot in the daughter’s closet. Every time the camera cuts, the ghost travels to the closet, and the film cuts to black. When the picture returns, the ghost is once again in the closet at a different time. Each scene varies from 20 minutes to 30 seconds as we see chunks of this family’s deterioration through the spirit’s eyes.
Thankfully, the brief run time and segmented scene structure mean there is not a lot of downtime in the film. The most annoying part of any horror movie to me is when obviously supernatural events occur and characters refuse to admit it. “Presence” dodges this trope.
The story isn’t a mystery; there is no quest to free the ghost or discover its identity. Instead, Soderbergh directs our attention to the secrets family members keep from each other. There’s a sort of dark fun to be had in watching this family collapse and become increasingly paranoid about the spirit in their halls.
Much of the fun is thanks to the excellent camera tricks. One thing about me is, if a movie is doing cool things with a camera, odds are I’ll like it. As the ghost traverses the stairs and halls, the camera glides seamlessly. The effect is spine-tingling. It’s uncanny how inhuman the movements are.
During the more intense arguments, the ghost often parks itself between characters and dramatically swivels its eyes between the two. Obviously, this is done to mimic traditional cutting when characters speak to each other, a tactic not possible in this format. Still, it’s amusing to hear a character say something devastating only for the camera — the ghost — to slowly pan 180 degrees to the other character’s reaction. This ghost is a drama queen!
Once the drama between the siblings and the ghost starts to come to a head in the final act, the film began to lose me. There are a few “reveals” meant to tie the ghost’s identity to the family’s tragedy that are entirely predictable and unnecessary. For a film so daring in its construction, it plays the narrative frustratingly safe.
Any horror fan will get a kick out of “Presence,” though. The melancholic family story is compelling, at least for a while, but the central gimmick is what really makes the film stand out.