Presence takes the classic ghost story movie and turns it on its head. Rather than following a family getting spooked by an afterlife entity, we follow the action from the ghost’s point of view. Literally. The entire film is shot in a POV style from the perspective of an otherworldly entity. A presence whose motivations and origins are unknown throughout the film’s brief hour-and-a-half runtime.

Presence isn’t the first film to tell a ghost story from the ghost’s perspective. Alejandro Amenabar did this excellently with his 2001 film The Others. 2017’s Casey Affleck-led A Ghost Story, has a narrative similar to that of Presence, following a ghost traveling through time and being stuck in one place. But Presence differs by putting the audience into the proverbial sheet of the ghost. We see everything through the ghost’s eyes while never quite knowing where the story will go next.

POV

2024’s Oscar-nominated Nominated Nickel Boys relied heavily on POV camera filming, but the entirety of Presence is done in this discipline. The camera also stays contained to the house. A house currently occupied by a struggling but ultimately pretty typical family of four. Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan play the parents of two teenagers. Eddy Maday as Tyler, the jockish bullying older brother, and Callina Liang as Chloe. The trauma scorned teenage daughter.

It’s revealed early on that two of Chloe’s friends died of a drug overdose before the family moved into the house. These are just breadcrumbs though for the bigger mystery Soderbergh lays out in his film. We spend much of the film guessing where the next plot beat will go and who the presence actually is. There is a twist revealed at the end that sheds the movie in a new light, but that mystery isn’t as captivating as the familial drama happening throughout the film.

Haunted House

Where Presence really shines is the fly-on-the-wall perspective we get of this normal suburban family. We get a front-row seat for a mother’s embarrassing drunk late-night confessions. We see a father struggle to relate to his grieving teenage daughter. And we see the type of anger and hate that only exist between two siblings dealing with hormones and high school so close together.

The family here does an excellent job of ignoring the camera and acting like normal people in their own homes. Nothing is ever overstated but it also never falls into that mumblecore style of directing. It truly feels like we are given a glimpse into these people’s lives rather than watching a staged production.

Outside Visitors

It’s only the players outside of core four where the film starts to suffer. The family hires a clairvoyant to inspect their house. This character and her husband feel unessential to the plot and act like Ed and Lorraine Warren type grifters. Asking for money the second the family shows any type of response to their “powers”.

Chloe’s boyfriend Ryan gets the most screen time outside of the family and his character is truly underdeveloped. It’s a sin I can forgive to keep this brisk 85-minute movie moving, but his character arc is just him rapidly moving through the different stages of incel loser creep. As the character grows more and more unhinged, it’s not a shock to the audience and we feel no pity for the boy throughout the film’s runtime.

Soderbergh

The entire film is confined to this POV perspective and inside the four walls of the home. It’s a really interesting idea and one that Soderbergh executes masterfully here. Soderbergh has always been an interesting director who pushes the boundaries of what can be done with cinema. He shot a movie entirely on iPhones back in 2018 and created the wild choose-your-own-adventure show Mosaic for HBO.

Aside from the smaller sojourn projects, Soderbergh also creates grand Hollywood-style movies with the Oceans and Magic Mike movies. Presence falls firmly in the former category. It’s a small-budget film that takes big risks and presents an interesting idea in cinema. The smaller ventures have always been hit or miss, and Presence has way more hits than misses.

Confines

These confines that he’s created for himself elevate the film. Having to work inside the POV perspective and never being able to leave the house, means we have to learn every bit of exposition from these four residents. It’s a contrivance that would be a hindrance to some, but for Soderbergh and writer David Koepp, it’s a blessing. A new way to deliver a classic genre movie.

Presence may not have worked without these self-imposed confines. Narratively the film struggles a bit and there are some plot points that go nowhere. But all that feels intentional when we are only seeing the plot through the ghost’s eyes in these long unbroken shots. Presence feels like a snapshot, not a full story.

Passing On

While this may not be remembered as one of Soderbergh’s greatest films, Presence is a really cool idea with flawless execution. It’s the type of filmmaking style you’d hear two college filmmakers drunkenly discuss out at a bar, knowing they do not have the acumen to take on such a project. Soderbergh does and he’s crafted a film that works on almost every level.

Presence is half billed as a horror film and that just isn’t the case. This is a film about families from the perspective of an outsider. The twist at the end reveals that it isn’t just a movie about families from the outside, but the lengths a family is willing to go to protect itself. Presence has a lot of big ideas and though not everyone lands, it’s a great experimental film worthy of the Soderbergh canon.