The Haunted Perspective of Steven Soderbergh's "Presence"

Cinema extends an invitation to experience a perspective outside our own. Last month, I wrote about how RaMell Ross' riveting "Nickel Boys" is a revolutionary filmmaking achievement in how we tell stories. The idea of existing through someone's panorama, whether they're telling the truth or not, is such a visually interesting idea, I'm surprised we're only now starting to take advantage of it. It's no mistake the first ripple effect comes from one of the most important filmmakers working today. In 1989, "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" defined the success of the independent cinema market as we know it today — all thanks to the one, the only Steven Soderbergh. He is, above all else, an innovator. Not every Soderbergh is a great film, but there's always reason to look forward to them because he's interested in experimenting with the medium and seeing where it takes him. There's an innate curiosity to the way he approaches each new project that feels downright inspiring. When I heard Soderbergh was going to take a stab at a ghost movie, my ears perked up immediately. The elevator pitch sold "Presence" as a film entirely from the POV of a ghost, which greatly undersells its effectiveness. "A family moves into their new suburban home and discovers there's an unseen entity living among them," is the kind of premise you see in countless horror movies. But this is not a horror movie, or at least not in the way you're imagining. The family at the center of "Presence," the Paynes, have issues that extend well beyond the spirit that lives among them. The family's youngest child, Chloe (Callina Liang), is still reeling from the emotional turmoil of losing her friend Nadia, who died in her sleep. Her father Chris (Chris Sullivan) is the only one attuned to the silent turmoil she's been bottling up, while struggling with his own complicated feelings. Rebekah (Lucy Liu), the family matriarch, is on the verge of getting caught for financial fraud, but that doesn't stop her from allocating all of her support upon her son Tyler (Eddy Maday), a pompous high school swimming champ being crushed under the enormous weight of pressure. "Presence" is a guttingly sad portrait of domestic neglect in the guise of a haunted house movie. What sets it apart from other films of its ilk is that the family drama is not a backdrop for jump scares and other ghostly phenomena — it's the point. David Koepp's screenplay paints a thorny portrait of a family on the ropes. There's a whole other movie going on in the margins about the mom's embezzlement scheme that we only receive glimpses of, but Soderbergh is such a masterful filmmaker, its vignette-paced story is all we need to put the pieces together for ourselves. On a first-time watch, the presence functions as an audience surrogate. There's an excellent scene where the Payne family is arranged as a portrait of dysfunction in the living room. A sullen Chloe has her head down on the couch and Chris is off in the corner drinking by himself, while Rebekah and Tyler are lost in their own world. The star child enthusiastically regales a story about a cruel prank he played on a girl at school that didn't end well. The spirit is clearly perturbed by Tyler's story and trashes his room in a fit of rage. It takes all of our anger and frustration onto a character that deserves it, revealing itself to the family in the process. What makes "Presence" such a fascinating inversion of horror movie tropes is that the ghost is not at all threatening and has no intentions on directly hurting anyone. We want to understand why this disembodied presence cares so much about this family. It is a perspective in perpetual pain, anger and confusion about its existence. The presence observes and, at points, intervenes however it knows it can. In that way, Soderbergh's formal experiment would make an excellent double bill with David Lowery's "A Ghost Story," a film that takes a different, but just as meaningful existential journey of a spirit's place in the world. The element of danger in "Presence" stems more from what happens when a shattered family is left so vulnerable by their untreated open wounds that outside threats operating in plain sight go ignored. They're able to infect everyone from the inside out. The poltergeist's identity is largely left a mystery until the film's bone-chilling conclusion — one that not only presents a whole new film through new eyes, but one that hit me with an emotional gut punch that I felt in my stomach long after it was over. "Presence" features one good scare and it's hard to shake off once you've seen it. The presence in Soderbergh's latest is as much an extension of ourselves as it is a character. There's always an omniscient eye watching over its characters, gathering glimpses of a bigger picture that exists well beyond the film's capability. We are all specters of cinema, in the end. "Presence" is currently available for rental/purchase on most streaming platforms. Be kind. Stay safe.