Presence (2024)
There are times when trailers just don’t do a film justice. Who hasn’t gone to see a comedy that looks great in the trailer, only to find out the trailer shows all the best parts and the rest of the movie is lame? The trailers for Presence give the impression that the film is a breathtakingly scary horror movie unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
Well, part of that is true. The rest, not so much.
Presence is unlike a lot of movies I’ve seen lately. It follows a family who moves into a house to get away from their troubles. Teenage daughter Chloe is tired of being upstaged by her brother, high school swimming star Tyler, and is grieving the loss of two of her friends. Wife and mom Rebekah is a workaholic who’s almost too pragmatic for her own good and dotes on Tyler while leaving Chloe pretty much out in the cold. Dad Chris, on the other hand, is Chloe’s advocate, but it seems Rebekah and Tyler don’t listen to him, and he often eats by himself with the TV on.
Here’s the thing, though: The story is told from the point of view of a ghost who haunts the house. We don’t know who this ghost is, or why it’s there, but we are it and we follow the family around the house during their various dramas. We can’t see everything, although we try, and we have a special empathy for Chloe, a lonely girl who’s dealing with her loss. We mostly stay in her closet and watch everything that goes on through a door slat. Her empathy seems to be mutual, as she advocates for us to the rest of the family.
That’s not to say we’re completely powerless. We can move things. Books. Posters on walls. Closet shelves. Trophies. Double old-fashioned glasses. Tyler’s friend, Ryan, is a big problem. We may have to do something about him.
OK, seriously. Presence is like an out-of-body experience. Most of the movie consists of long tracking shots that float us all over the house, unavoidably beyond out control. Sometimes it’s completely dark, but we have to move anyway. It’s weirdly effective and fascinating. It also lulls the viewer into complacency until the critical moments which I won’t spoil. There wasn’t a single point in the film when I wasn’t intrigued and amazed.
Because everything is from the ghost’s point of view, we don’t get too close to the family. We don’t hear every conversation from start to finish, we don’t hear their backstories beyond what they tell each other, but we do get little snippets. We know that Chloe is a good student by the trig textbook she studies out of, but we don’t know what her other talents are. We know Rebekah is glued to her phone and computer all the time arguing about deals, but we don’t know what her profession is. Same thing with Chris, who deals with family conflicts with the finesse of a cop who’s had some practice at de-escalation.
And yet it’s enough to form opinions about each of the family members and decide who is worth following or not.
Since there isn’t a ton of dialogue or a lengthy plot, the acting in this movie is nicely understated. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Chris, who seems doomed to stand by helplessly and watch his family fracture. Tyler is full of himself. Rebekah enables Tyler. Chloe is just trying to get through the day with a measure of normalcy. It doesn’t seem as if it would be enough, but it really is.
Is Presence scary? Not really. Is it a horror film? Not really. Is it a family movie? Heck, no. It is, however, surprisingly entertaining and much too good to be a January movie.
Presence is currently in theaters. Rated R.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, West Mullholland, Lucas Papaelias, Eddy Maday, Daniel Danielson, Natalya Woolems-Torres, Benny Elledge, Jared Wiseman.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Written by David Koepp.