As auteurs go, Steven Soderbergh is relatively humble. His closing credits never use the phrase “a film by,” and while he typically shoots and edits his movies himself—not since 2011’s Contagion has anyone else fulfilled either of those roles in one of his features—he also deploys pseudonyms (Peter Andrews for cinematography, Mary Ann Bernard for editing), as if to minimize the fastidious control he exerts over his own productions. That’s especially noteworthy in the case of Presence, given that its star is, well, Steven Soderbergh—or rather, his camera.
To be sure, there are actors in this movie, which centers on a white-collar nuclear family that’s just moved into an appealing new home in suburban New Jersey; Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan play the parents, respectively named Rebekah and Chris, while their disaffected teenage children are Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). But the heart of Presence is its titular entity, an invisible being that roams about the house in a state of persistent curiosity, and whose field of vision doubles as the audience’s point of view.
Soderbergh has long toyed with the tools of cinema (remember that Unsane was shot entirely on an iPhone), and here he has devised an intriguing stylistic challenge for himself. Presence unfolds as a series of handheld tracking shots, separated by cuts to black; some of these last fewer than 30 seconds, others extend for up to 10 minutes. This method alone is hardly revolutionary—two recent Best Picture winners earned their acclaim in part for their long takes—but Presence feels different as a work of voyeuristic intimacy. For reasons unknown, the ghost—and that’s what I’m calling it, supernatural semantics be damned—is confined to the house, wandering through hallways and ambling into closets. (In this regard the movie would make a fascinating double feature with Robert Zemeckis’ Here, given that it echoes that film’s single-location setup but replaces its static camera with a continually roving one.) We see what it sees, allowing us to observe secret moments in a way that seems less invasive than simply watchful.
As a matter of technical skill, the gambit is impressive. The camera glides gently and methodically, often accompanied by Zack Ryan’s piano-based score, and Soderbergh never wavers from the format’s rigidity. At the same time, his palpably human touch—you can practically feel him climbing stairs or racing through rooms—imbues the ghost with an odd tenderness. It’s just a weightless, voiceless thing, yet it somehow accrues a range of emotions, evincing sadness, anger, fear, and even embarrassment. (During a sex scene, it watches from a distance, as though wishing to afford the participants a modest measure of privacy.)
The human souls who populate the film’s cloistered universe are not quite as distinctive. Our primary emotional axis is Chris, whose mighty physicality (Sullivan was a regular on Soderbergh’s The Knick) belies a perpetual discontent. Chris disapproves of Rebekah, both for her unspecified criminal behavior and her obvious favoritism of Tyler; he also worries about the emotional welfare of Chloe, who’s bereaved on account of her best friend’s death from a drug overdose. For her part, Chloe exhibits an intuitiveness—she instinctively senses the ghost—that instantly engenders our (i.e., the camera’s) sympathy. Rebekah, meanwhile, mostly clucks at Chris and dotes on Tyler, an athlete doing his best to impress Ryan (West Mulholland), a popular kid who flashes immediate interest in Chloe.
The plot that binds these bluntly defined personalities is straightforward to the point of slightness. There is an admirable frugality to the screenplay (by David Koepp, who also wrote Soderbergh’s KIMI and the upcoming Black Bag), eschewing backstory while nonetheless suggesting undercurrents of anguish and unease. But the picture’s briskness can also work against it, impeding it from fully developing its characters. And while the movie is too aesthetically unique to feel clichéd, it still makes room for an unfortunate scene in which a medium stops by and delivers some tedious mythologizing and foreshadowing.
In terms of theme, Presence is something of a Rorschach test, inviting viewers to engraft on it the metaphor of their choice. Perhaps it’s about the gnawing persistence of trauma (horror’s favorite buzzword is dutifully spoken aloud), or the perilous task of parenting, or the elusive quest for spiritual fulfillment, or the sanctity of family. In one sense, it’s gratifying that the movie doesn’t hammer its allegory; in another, the ambiguity tends to reinforce its looming insubstantiality.
Despite its wispiness, Presence manages to develop a frisson of narrative momentum, culminating in a final set piece that’s genuinely chilling. And if Soderbergh is at times a victim of his own restraint, he remains a director of estimable craftsmanship, preventing the movie from ever feeling cheap or gimmicky. With a single camera and a whole lot of discipline, he’s made a pretty good ghost story—even if, when you take a long hard look at it, you discover that nothing’s really there.
Grade: B
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.