Presence (2025) review

Dir. Steven Soderbergh

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Few mainstream American directors relish in playing with form and turning convention on its head quite like Steven Soderbergh. His avant-garde approach makes deceptively simple premises, such as the one in Presence, more flavorful and intriguing. In the case of his latest, those coming for another ghost story will get just that, coupled with immersive family drama and a stronger sense of sadness then they surely expected.

Shot from the point-of-view of an unseen ghost (or “presence”) that lurks inside a lovely family home, Presence opens with a Realtor selling the property to a family of four. Rebekah (Lucy Liu) is the workaholic matriarch, seldom seen without her phone or computer. Her husband, Chris (Chris Sullivan), is the emotional core of the family, trying to keep them together as they so obviously fall apart. The teenage children are Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). Tyler is a self-indulgent jock who can do no wrong in the eyes of his mother. Chloe is far more insular, a mood compounded by the recent death of her friend under suspicious circumstances.

Soderbergh’s camera shows us what the poltergeist sees, its POV often positioned in the corners of rooms, occasionally hovering over its characters going about their lives. While everyone remains unaware of the presence inside the home, Chloe seems to sense it. At times, she stares directly into the camera, as if she’s aware she’s being watched. Only Chris takes her vague notions seriously. Mom is too busy, and Tyler simply thinks she’s on drugs.

Presence is comprised of long-takes from the perspective of the ghost, and is punctuated by frequent and abrupt cuts to black, signaling the passage of an indeterminant amount of time. Soderbergh and frequent screenwriting collaborator David Koepp find themselves more interested in exploring how this dysfunctional family operates without the idea that they’re being watched. After an extended period of time, the ghost starts involving itself in the family’s escapades. At times, this means moving Chloe’s books from her bed to her dresser. At others, it’s alerting another character that something is happening through supernatural means.

Koepp’s writing is so effective at developing the family members through a combination of banal interactions and general happenstance that you’d be forgiven if you forgot you were looking through the eyes an apparition the whole time. The film’s effectiveness at unnerving you through its general unhurried and perpetually unsettling plot progression is only triumphed by the way it gets you so invested in this family that you start to recognize the sadness beneath the surface. In particular, Chris Sullivan gives a standout performance; the thanklessly empathetic dad who tries to spend at least a few minutes in the rooms of his children, talking to them, and hearing them out. Mom is always too busy, to which he remarks that every one of her so-called solutions involves them doing nothing.

Soderbergh has always spat water in the face of conventional cinematic narrative, commenting on such acceptance of rules is in some ways contributing to the tyranny of the medium. His rejections of form are always admirable, even if in Presence, the trade-off is characters must occasionally speak in plot-points and contextualize the happenings themselves, for benefit of clarity for the viewer. The veteran filmmaker also reminds you how significant canted angles and long-takes are in the horror space, so very effective in contributing to general feelings of unease. The spectral perspective of Presence would’ve been just another aesthetic choice if Koepp’s script didn’t prioritize the human interest of the family, so much so that the ending is worse than frightening, it’s legitimately emotionally affecting.

Starring: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland, and Julia Fox. Directed by: Steven Soderbergh.