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With box office hits like the Ocean's trilogy, Erin Brockovich and Magic Mike under his belt, Steven Soderbergh has built a reputation for being one of Hollywood's most talented and prolific filmmakers. Whether it's a heist comedy, a psychological drama or a crime thriller, the 61-year-old director has done it all. Despite famously retiring back in 2013, then reversing his decision mere months later, Soderbergh has made no less than eight movies since, spanning a variety of film genres as diverse as anything else in his repertoire. With his 35th feature, the aptly titled Presence, however, Soderbergh is tackling a tried-and-true staple of cinema — the suburban ghost story. Unfolding as a series of single takes shot using a camera-mounted drone, the story follows husband and wife Chris and Rebekah (Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan) and their teenage children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). It's been a couple of months since Chloe's best friend, Nadia, died suddenly after taking illicit drugs, and as the family settles into their new home — a century-old house with no previous history of supernatural activity — Chloe begins to feel a mysterious presence hovering around her bedroom. Thinking at first that the otherworldly phenomena she's been experiencing has something to do with her deceased friend reaching out to her from beyond the grave, Chloe tries to tell her family, who react with little more than disbelief about the whole situation. After the entity makes its presence known to everyone, however, that's when it becomes apparent that the ghost that's been haunting Chloe is indeed very real. Consulting with a local clairvoyant, the family are informed that the entity may be trying to prevent something terrible from happening in the future. But who could be in danger? And what motivation could the entity have to try and help them in the first place? Told from the visual perspective of the spectre, the result is a ghostly tale unlike most of what Hollywood can come up with. An introspective drama about mourning, dealing with trauma, and the fragility of life itself, Presence is a slow-burn tale whose deliberate pacing might prove to be a turn-off for those anticipating more of a traditional genre fright-fest. For open-minded moviegoers seeking a more thoughtful take on suburban horror, on the other hand, it's just as haunting, if not more so, than anything else the genre has to offer. |
Presence screens under the Centrepiece programme at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Its runtime is 1 hr. 25 min.
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