Presence is, in many ways, a rather conventional haunted house movie. We have an all-American family with an unstable dynamic, a seemingly ideal home, and a spirit that vies to resist what it sees as an egregious intrusion with eerie poltergeist antics. Add in a shaky-voiced medium who tries in vain to warn said family of impending doom, and one might be rather disappointed at the amount of tropes the film’s creators make no attempt to move away from and/or subvert.
As is usually the case with director Steven Soderbergh, however, the main appeal of Presence is not its story-related conventions (which is more on the shoulders of David Koepp, its screenwriter), but a particular technical innovation that helps lift it a shade or two higher than what the haunted house genre normally offers.
The camera, in Presence, takes on the point-of-view of its titular poltergeist, and while its identity becomes something of an open question as the film progresses, it’s unmistakable that Soderbergh’s choice to frame the perspective in such a way dynamically draws the viewer into the story; creating, even, a relationship between the spirit’s POV and the audience’s POV that is subject to a level of exploration (and, indeed, subversion) that perhaps a more traditional format would miss.
The spirit is introduced before the family moves in, and its glide through the empty house primes the viewer for how it will move over the course of the film. A gentle, lone piano track plays, lending the opening a serene innocence; and suggesting that the entity may not be as sinister as other horror movie poltergeists.
Then the Paynes arrive, who, like many picture-perfect families, are hiding serious fractures. They have just purchased a new house but Chris (Chris Sullivan) suspects his Type A wife Rebekah (Lucy Liu) of involvement in illegal financial ventures. The two are divided over their children Tyler and Chloe (Eddie Maday and Callina Liang, respectively), as Rebekah dotes over the sporty eldest son but is emotionally distant from Chloe, who recently had a good friend, Nadia, die from a possible drug overdose, and has closed herself off in mourning.
The spirit fixates on Chloe, observing her periods of grief and banal laze from the teen’s closet, or hovering over the edge of her bed. That it is attentive to her, even to the point of organizing her school material while she showers, seems to suggest that the spirit is Nadia. Chloe certainly believes this, for she is preternaturally piqued to the spirit’s presence whenever it is near, and cannot shake the feeling that it is her deceased friend haunting their abode. But in fear of rocking the boat, she does not disclose this suspicion.
The presence, in place of spookily turning the lights on and off or knocking over cribs, peeks in on the daily goings-on of the Paynes, their private arguments and heart-to-hearts. One sees how Rebekah’s uncomfortably intense devotion to her eldest child and his accomplishments is a compensation for her own errors; and how Chris, in the absence of any empathy from his wife, runs to his daughter for solace instead. A divorce is brewing, and as familial discord continues to unravel the Paynes’ bond, a fellow student, Ryan (West Mulholland), enters the picture.
Popular and good-looking, Tyler sees him as his entry into the inner circles of the school, while a mutual attraction instantly sparks between Ryan and Chloe. This, and the discovery of Tyler’s improper extracurricular antics, infuriates the presence, to the point where the family can no longer deny the extraordinary nature of what is taking place in their home.
A medium comes and goes, relating some key information about the presence’s nature, and a warning is related but ignored. Chris and Rebekah leave for a work trip, leaving Tyler and Chloe alone in the house, until Ryan comes over for a visit.
Two reveals occur around the climax of Presence that provide important context for happenings earlier on: 1) it is revealed that Ryan is the serial killer responsible for not only the death of Nadia, but of another girl whom Chloe knew and grieved over; and 2) the presence, after it has Tyler defenestrate Ryan, and himself, to their deaths, is revealed to have been Tyler the whole time, with the idea being that his shade was somehow sent back in time in order to save his sister from being killed.
In the matter of Ryan, his villainy is simply doubled, since the presence had foiled an earlier attempt of his to incapacitate Chloe by slipping a drug into her drink, escalating the threat from potential date-rape to full-on murder. Overall, though, the serial killer reveal adds little substance to the film, for one immediately questions the plausibility of a teenager getting away with not one but two drug-related murders before his involvement with the Payne siblings. Plus, the script has Ryan needlessly monologue over his violation of Chloe—wouldn’t his actions be all the more sinister without the screenwriter’s attempts to psychologically justify his behavior? Last of all, the actor who plays Ryan is clearly not up for the intensity/duplicity his role requires, instead unfortunately coming across as very stilted, sans any of the charm that might propel him into the upper echelons of high school popularity and the good graces of his victims.
As for the reveal of the presence’s identity, it also smacks of superficial plot-twist shock value, but a couple things save it from being just that. For one, throughout Presence, Tyler is shown to be an arrogant asshole, constantly disparaging his sister’s grief-fueled neurosis, and uncaring of anything except his own success. He scornfully refuses to entertain any possibility of the supernatural, in spite of clear evidence, and it is his currying of Ryan’s favor that allows the predator’s entry into their home.
But when one realizes that the attentiveness of the presence towards Chloe is not the behavior of Nadia looking after her best friend, but of Tyler enacting reparations for his treatment of his little sister from beyond the veil, this adds an unexpected emotional dimension to the character, whom the audience so far has only known as a braggart. The presence’s rage over Tyler’s friend group’s vile bullying of another student further exacerbates its post-mortem remorse.
The deeper point of Presence, beneath the genre machinations, is how many of these characters take for granted what they have in front of them as they seek to fill whatever void needs filling. Tyler and Rebekah’s desire for material success marginalizes Chloe’s loneliness, and Chloe’s need for physical intimacy mutes her from the potential dangers Ryan poses. Only Chris seems to be cognizant of their situation’s precariousness, but of course, his pleas for empathy fall on deaf ears; just as, in turn, the medium’s warnings end up falling on his.
The anachronistic rectification that Tyler’s shade must undergo (echoing the age-old notion of ghosts being what they are due to unfinished business on the mortal plane) seems to be a call for his family to not forsake their ties, and to do away with whatever might take them away from seeing what’s right in front of them and living in the present—get it?
A little precious, sure, but executed well enough. Soderbergh’s direction and cinematography is clean, effectively navigating through the house, the film’s only location, and maneuvering around its denizens with spirit-like ease. It has been something of a fad over the last decade or so to utilize the long take, and although the technique has mutated into an excuse for filmmakers to show off extraneous stylistic flair, in Presence, the single continuous shot takes on the quality of character. By forcing the audience into the presence’s POV, it is both a novel take on the genre and a clever way to hide the impact of the film’s secret (more astute viewers might not be so surprised, I’ll grant) protagonist. Notice, Soderbergh deftly angles his camera away from all reflections, up to the very end—as if to make comment on the entity’s inability to “face” itself until justice is served.
The family-drama-nested-inside-horror film schtick has been done before, and David Koepp’s dialogue is merely serviceable—but on the whole, it achieves to a measure of genuine (if minor) ingenuity. Even shaky performances from its younger cast are generously balanced out by Liu and Sullivan, with Sullivan in particular acting as the dependable anchor in more ways than one. While Presence is far from a masterpiece, Soderbergh once again displays his prowess with finding ways to be creative in oftentimes stultifying genres; and in an age where genre flicks unreservedly stultify their audiences, it’d do one best to happily welcome such a presence.
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