
By Seb Jenkins - January 21, 2025
Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp team up to create a haunted-house supernatural thriller filmed entirely through the eyes of the ghost.
The haunted house genre is among the most congested within the wide world of horror. We all know the trope – family moves into an old Victorian house, a demon takes hold, death and destruction ensues, yadda yadda yadda. Fortunately, Steven Soderbergh has finally shaken things up with his renowned Swiss army knife talents by bringing us a supernatural thriller shot entirely from the point of view of the ‘presence.’ To make matters even more mouth-watering, he teamed up with his old screenwriter pal David Koepp to do it – fresh off the back of their success with the incredible 2022 thriller, Kimi.
Do you ever get the feeling that someone – or something – is watching you? When a family of four moves into their new gorgeous 100-year-old suburban house, we watch the inner squabbles of their familial theatre through the eyes of a silent ghost.

Teenage daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), already stricken by grief after the sudden death of her best friend, senses the ‘presence’ more than the rest. Perhaps it is a sign that Nadia is still around and watching over her – she hopes. Father Chris (Chris Sullivan) does his best to remain open-minded, while desperately attempting to keep his family together with Pritt stick, chewing gum, and command strips. Mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu) is either too busy to listen or too enamoured by her perfect son to care about the trials and tribulations of young Chloe. Swimming wunderkind Tyler (Eddy Maday) cannot understand why his sister is still upset about her friend’s apparent overdose – ironically while near-overdosing on sheer smarm himself.
As supernatural events become more frequent and the physical line between the realms begins to blur, we are left with questions that loom almost as hauntingly as the ‘presence’ itself. Who is this spirit? Where did it come from? Is it evil or friendly? And most importantly, what does it want?
Admittedly, the script loses pace a little in the third act and the tension dissipates when the ‘what-ifs’ are finally replaced by actual answers. While the nuggets of salacious family gossip serve as moreish breadcrumbs at the start of the film, they fall a little on the outlandish side by the end. That being said, Presence serves as a perfect example of how much you can achieve with a good story and a genius director. Not to mention the fact that Lucy Liu is deliciously unlikeable as Rebecca and Chris Sullivan flexes his This Is Us muscles to great effect. Callina Liang follows up on her 2024 film debut with a worthy lead performance, and newcomer Eddy Maday comes across as vastly more experienced than he is.

Presence is at its very best when it leans into what makes it unique – long, winding one-shots that glide around the house through the eyes of the ghost. Not only does it provide this incredibly immersive blend of fly-on-the-wall documentary and found-footage thriller, but it also gives us believable glimpses into the secrets that bubble beneath family life. After all, a ghost can eavesdrop on a conversation unseen. A ghost can linger in the corner during the most intimate of moments. A ghost can be all-seeing and all-knowing without ever being
seen or known. But what if a ghost could also directly influence the proceedings of physical life, like an invisible seventeenth chess piece?
Rumours are that Neon acquired distribution rights to Presence for just $5 million, which would tend to suggest a rather modest film budget. The first-person cinematography certainly lends to that idea, relying almost entirely on clever camera work and compelling storytelling over expensive CGI ghosts and demons.
All-in-all – a film that could have been worthy of five stars had it been handed a higher budget, but perhaps that is hauntingly against the point.
Coming to Cinemas January 24


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