This movie is extremely exasperating.
During a long and (mostly) illustrious career, director Steven Soderberg has come in two flavors:
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| Realtor Cece (Julia Fox, far right) shows off the house to its soon-to-be new owners: from left, Chloe (Callina Liang), Chris (Chris Sullivan), Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Rebekah (Lucy Liu). Trouble is, the house already has a resident tenant... |
• the occasional cinematic experimenter who stretches the medium, starting with 1989’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, and continuing with 2002’s utterly unwatchable Full Frontal, and now this deliberately challenging take on the classic haunted house story.
The “gimmick” here is that the entire story emerges from the point of view of the ghost trapped within its lavish suburban home. The film never leaves the house, because the ghost cannot.
Okay, potentially clever in concept ... but the execution is an assault on the senses. The house is empty as scripter David Koepp’s narrative begins, and this entity initially swoops from room to room with supernatural speed, spinning and gyrating in a manner certain to induce vertigo and even nausea in viewers prone to motion sickness.
As usual, Soderberg is responsible for his own cinematography — “concealed” behind his familiar pseudonym, as Peter Andrews — so he’s wholly responsible for this dizzying assault on the senses. And although this spectral entity soon settles down a bit, its occasional whip-fast plunges — from one room to another — remain jarring.
The house soon is purchased and tastefully furnished by the not-so-typical American family of Rebekah (Lucy Liu), Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their two high school-age children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang).
We learn more about this family as the ghost eavesdrops on them, individually and collectively. Each revelatory session is a single tracking shot — some fleeting, some impressively long — which then cuts to a brief black screen, as the ghost slides through a wall to go elsewhere (at least, that’s what it feels like).
It soon becomes clear that Rebekah is clandestinely up to something shady, likely a sort of financial swindling, which worries Chris enough to think about separating. But he can’t, because he needs to be around for their fragile daughter, still deeply traumatized by the recent drug overdose of two friends, one her former bestie.
The unpleasantly arrogant Tyler, a bullying jock who swears constantly and believes that he walks on water, enjoys playing cruel pranks on vulnerable classmates; he also has no patience with his sister’s fragility. To make matters worse, Rebekah’s unwholesome fondness for him — at the expense of practically ignoring Chloe — borders on a Jocasta complex.
Not long into the story, this quartet is augmented by Tyler’s friend Ryan (West Mulholland), who may as well have the phrase “slimy bastard” tattooed on his forehead, and soon has designs on the susceptible Chloe. Ryan turns out to be a total creep in more ways than one.
Lemmetellya, spending 90 minutes with these folks is a bundle of laughs. (Not.)
The ghost’s “home” is the closet in what has become Chloe’s bedroom; it frequently watches her through the slotted doors. Likely due to her highly agitated state, Chloe soon senses it, even stares directly at it. Perhaps intending to confirm her suspicions, while Chloe takes a shower at one point, the ghost moves some of her books across the room.
That’s a clever bit of cinematic wizardry, and unexpected enough to make one’s heart skip a beat.
The question, then, is whether the ghost is benign, possibly helpful ... or malignant.
Honestly, though, I couldn’t have cared less.
Liu, long an actress with a range that stretches from A to B, makes Rebekah brittle, spiteful, secretive and downright dismissive of her husband and daughter. Sullivan’s Chris is a hapless, ineffectual dweeb who lacks the balls to call out his wife as a selfish bitch. Maday quite successfully plays Tyler as a narcissistic asshole; Mulholland makes Ryan equally unpalatable.
We’re intended to sympathize with Chloe, and Liang is convincing as a badly wounded sparrow. Behind closed doors, though, Chloe has a reckless, self-destructive streak; this makes her less sympathetic.
Natalie Woolams-Torres and Lucas Papaelias pop up briefly as Lisa and Carl; she’s “sensitive” to otherworldly presences, and immediately perceives the home’s unseen fifth occupant. Woolams-Torres’ jolt of alarm, as Lisa initially attempts to cross the front door’s threshold, is note-perfect.
But moments like that are too few and far between. Most of this film is a slog, and a disorienting one (the latter certainly deliberate, but to no avail.)
Presence had an understandably brief theatrical release earlier this year, and now it’s available via streaming services. Soderbergh received accolades in certain quarters: “One of the scariest movies you’ll see all this year,” “It will chill you,” and so forth.
Stuff and nonsense. It’ll do nothing of the kind.
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