Steven Soderbergh’s innovative and immersive “Presence” is a ghost story that would have worked just as well without the ghost. Everything we witness in this film is literally seen through the P.O.V. of a spectral presence, but it’s the machinations of a deeply dysfunctional nuclear family that makes it all so intriguing. If the prolific Soderbergh and the greatly talented screenwriter David Koepp (“Jurassic Park,” “Panic Room,” “Mission: Impossible”) had told this tale via conventional methods, I have no doubt it would have had the same level of impact.
The entirety of “Presence” takes place within the walls of a gorgeous, warmly appointed, 100-year-old home in an undefined suburb. (It could be next door to the house in the even more gimmicky Tom Hanks/Robin Wright film “Here.”) Soderbergh, who is also cinematographer and editor, places us inside the “character” of some sort of ghostly presence who occupies the house, zipping about in long tracking shots, using a fade-to-black technique to transition from one day to the next. (Hmmm, given the visual style, maybe this is the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock!)
In the opening sequence, the ghost moves freely about the unoccupied home, allowing us to take in the rich wood paneling, the open and welcoming kitchen, the staircase leading up to the bedrooms and the view from the living room windows. The house is up for sale, with Julia Fox delivering a vibrant cameo as the real estate agent who seals the deal with the very first clients to see the place.
It’s the control-freak mother, Rebekah (Lucy Liu), who makes the call, in large part because the house is in a great school district for her competitive swimming star son Tyler (Eddie Maday). We can see from the get-go that Rebekah’s husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) is a living, breathing afterthought in Rebekah’s world, who also and quite clearly favors Tyler over their daughter Chloe (Callina Laing), a sensitive girl who is in mourning and feeling broken and lost after her best friend died of a drug overdose.
It quickly becomes evident that this is one effed-up family. Rebekah has some sort of high-finance, high-pressure job and it seems as if she’s been engaging in some potentially illegal activities, which she rationalizes by saying she’ll do anything, ANYTHING, in order for her son to have the best opportunities in life. Chris is stressed out by all the tension in the house, what with Rebekah barely acknowledging his presence, golden boy Tyler displaying an alarming mean streak and Chloe spiraling into an emotional wreck. (A scene in which Tyler recounts what he thinks is a hilarious episode of horrific bullying reinforces our feelings that Rebekah enables Tyler’s terrible behavior, Chloe is rightfully repulsed by her brother, and Chris is a weak-willed milquetoast who allows Rebekah to walk all over him, because he has always felt she’s completely out of his league.)
With screenwriter Koepp (who collaborated with Soderbergh on the similarly claustrophobic and quite terrific Zoë Kravitz vehicle “Kimi” in 2022) deftly sprinkling in little details about the family’s day-to-day existence, e.g., they never cook and every single meal they have is takeout, and it’s the intuitive Chloe who first becomes aware of the ghost in the house, who she believes might be the spirit of her deceased best friend.
The ghost begins to toy with her by moving items about her bedroom, closing doors, making things shake as if there’s a minor earthquake, even blowing a cold breath in her direction. Eventually, though, it seems as if the ghost is becoming protective of Chloe, especially when she gets involved with a handsome and brooding jock named Ryan (West Mulholland) who keeps telling Chloe she’s in charge of the relationship even as he manipulates her in increasingly insidious fashion.
By now you’re quite likely wondering how any of this makes for a frightening movie, what with us seeing everything from the ghost’s point of view. “Presence” does have a few effective jump scares, including one goosebump-inducing moment late in the story, but the more we get to know the ghost — and I know that sounds weird, but we do feel like we come to know him/her/it/they/them — the more we feel a sense of empathy for this being. Like the Beast in “Beauty and the Beast” or the Phantom of the Opera, this ghost seems to be a kind of tragic anti-hero, trapped in this house, suspended in some sort of in between-world, bearing witness to a modern American family that should be grateful for all the gifts life has given them but is falling apart at the seams. That’s the real horror of “Presence.”