Presence (2024)

Presence

Steven Soderbergh’s ghost story, “Presence(2024)”, is set in a beautifully renovated, a hundred-year-old house situated in a suburban neighborhood, which is modern and quite spacious but seems to have history. The camera is almost as if it is trying to look at things, looking through the second floor’s windows and then coming down the stairs to see a flustered real estate woman and a family of four she is about to sell the house to. The camera captures an entire house in one single frame as if it was circling around the house showing off the walls, wood paneling, mirrors and avonold floors etc but went into every room in just a wide angle shot. But this is definitely no realtor’s glossy brochure aimed at flirting with the target audience. Throughout the rest of the film, Soderbergh uses this perspective looking throughout the whole of the out-of-focus camera image. “Presence” may well turn out to be the first-ever movie on ghosts in which the ghost in case is the cinematographer Brian De Palma.

I am not lying, but also not really. In ‘Presence,’ the entire film can legitimately be watched from the viewpoint of the invisible entity who has possessed the house as we view the movie. There is always a spirit that hovers and oversees the event, and it always seems to be aware of everything; nothing passes its notice. In this specific scenario, the cinematographer, though, is Soderbergh himself (who goes under the name Peter Andrews for this film). He has shot many of his films, starting from ‘Traffic,’ there is still the sense that a part of the joy of working for Soderbergh in ‘Presence’ was precisely the irony that as a ghost, Soderbergh found a way to participate. In other words, to be in the action and blend with it.

But no. In the case of “Presence,” the presence is in the main it is simply a presence, and for long stretches, we almost forget that it is present; this is a shoestring film of a rather flamboyant and voyeuristic visual aesthetic. Soderberg handles the entirety of the sequential action in a long shot, which he may terminate also with progression to black. Everything is extremely stylish and percussionistic. But if he had done a version of the film in San Francisco without the device of the ghost as a camera-eye-stylized image, then most probably it would have been the same film.

When it comes to families, this one appears to have its own set of family challenges. The patriarch of this family, whom everyone refers to as Mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu) is a complete control freak who runs the household and has favorites. Closes she is to a high finance super biatch, but she has done something illegal that would get her in trouble. Tyler (Eddy Maday), her son is nice and bubbly in public but behind doors, he is a bully of the worst sort, and Chloe (Callina Liang) his sister is deep down already getting depressed, not just for teenagers’ blues because her best friend, Nadia, died a few months before of drug overdose, two students from this school already died that way. Soderbergh takes his sweet time researching the children but it is only Chloe who is able to feel the ghost. Who is the ghost exactly, who is supposed to guard people, no one knows why ghosts do haunt.

It’s tough to dislike Soderbergh’s ‘little films’ when they’re so audacious and original and miles better than what many other directors would call a rough cut of some throwaway project. Except, here’s what you can’t shake off. A large proportion of their purpose is so that Soderbergh can have fun playing around with them. This isn’t a terrible attitude to have toward either art or filmmaking, but it’s also not a shock that he has a habit of crafting these films in a manner that feels ‘good’ (they help in moving forward) but lacks any impression. It’s as if a person is putting a puzzle together, while simultaneously creating the puzzle pieces.

David Koepp penned the script for this one, and as you recall, he was also responsible for writing Soderbergh’s ‘Kimi’ (2022), which was a far more watchable film. The ghost idea in ‘Presence’ could pass for a backdrop that is at the forefront but fails to deliver significant scares and great twists. The film instead places its central conflict visually in the human world, especially when Chloe manages to penetrate into an overly sexualized friendship with Tyler’s friend who is played by West Mullholland with a rather convincing and masochistic tone. He is a wonderful young actor and all the acting in ‘Presence’ is actually impressive. Callina Liang adds up to Chloe’s depression, Lucy Liu turns Rebecca into a scheming troublemaker who keeps on enticing you to peel the layers off the scheming, and Chris Sullivan in particular drew my attention, he portrays the tormented father in a folded Louis CK version; that I imagine, trying to parent in a world where children should not swear, goes out of fashion so long as families seem to interact with each other.

“Presence”, in its worn-out drama, seems to be addressing topicality, much like it addresses many other matters such as darkness, the upsurge of teenage psychological disorders, or the likes of psychopaths. However, it is merely teasing them all. It is desirable for the film to make sense in the end. However, it does make sense as a repeat of another entertaining half-pleasing Soderbergh trinket only this time round he is the phantom in the contraption.

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