Steven Soderbergh's "Presence" is a ghost story unlike anything you've seen before

In a time of twisty, “prestige” supernatural horror, the good, old-fashioned ghost story has fallen by the wayside. These days, everything’s a demonic entity that will climb inside your mouth to possess you and make you sport an eerie grin, or Nicolas Cage playing a burnt-out glam rocker conjuring the devil inside of a custom-made doll. (As if that’s such a stretch for ol’ Nickster!) We’ve got vampires, ghouls, werewolves and zombies galore. The monsters are all gruesome and gory, and everything, everything is an allegory for grief.

Happily, Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, “Presence,” gets back to basics. It’s a classically eerie ghost movie that’s not at all reliant on jump scares or metaphorical frights to unnerve viewers. “Presence” does away with all of those unnecessary frills found in contemporary horror, leaving one unusual, but very simple, stylistic device in their place: The camera is the ghost. 

Soderbergh’s Ghost-O-Vision conceit requires no learning curve. It is uncomplicated and devoid of showy spectacle. Right from the initial glimpses inside the suburban home where the film is set, we can understand exactly how the rest of the film will look and feel. It’s not a gimmick or a trick. Rather, it’s a clever way for Soderbergh to make the viewer feel like a voyeur, listening in on increasingly intimate conversations that we wouldn’t otherwise be privy to. In your standard horror film, characters would (hopefully) speak so naturally that we would disregard the fact that we’re watching a movie. In “Presence,” we’re rarely allowed to forget that we are an interloper in the lives of a family as they slowly unspool. But as fascinating as the film is in technical form, it’s screenwriter David Koepp’s script that makes “Presence” a real draw. His writing is thorny and cuts deceptively deep, like a scrape that looks like a surface wound until it won’t stop bleeding. Soderbergh’s keen directorial experiment and Koepp’s screenplay enable “Presence” to flourish as one of the smartest horror dramas in recent memory, and no sage or exorcism will be enough to keep it from lingering beside you long after you leave this house.

But first, we must cross the threshold of the front door. Or, in this case, awaken from a phantasmic slumber in a bedroom upstairs to the sound of a car pulling into the driveway outside. Someone is coming, and the journey downstairs allows the viewer to get a sense for the house’s layout. We’re inside of a 100-year-old, two-story home with updated appliances and original wood finishings. All of that and more will soon be pointed out by the flighty realtor Cece (a criminally underused Julia Fox, whose role is, unfortunately, more of a cameo, despite some inspired pre-release marketing suggesting otherwise), who arrives only minutes before the family she’s trying to unload the house on. Rebekah (Lucy Liu), Chris (Chris Sullivan), and teenagers Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang) have been looking for a house just like this. It’s in the right school district for Tyler to continue his varsity swimming career, and enough of a new start for Chloe, who has just experienced a seismic tragedy after losing a close friend.

You may be thinking, “Great, another grief allegory,” but the ghost in “Presence” is not necessarily emblematic of Chloe’s distress. Whether or not the entity watching them knows about what Chloe is going through is something that every viewer gets to decide for themselves as the film rolls on. Koepp isn’t interested in offering easy answers on that front, and “Presence” is all the better for it. Instead of using the supernatural as an analogy for the unknowable weight of loss, the film is steeped in this burden. The grief doesn’t just affect Chloe, it’s slowly working its way into the lives of her entire family, pulling them apart as they retreat further into themselves. In “Presence,” the fleeting traces of connection between parents and their children are as obvious yet intangible as any ghost. 

Be it in “Contagion” or “Unsane,” Soderbergh’s formal experiments often serve as stylistic entry points for the sharp cultural commentary within a film’s script, and “Presence” is no different. It features the director’s favored skewed angles and ambitious yet prudent style, but in this film, those signatures allow us to sit up close and watch as two teenagers grow up too fast. Koepp gradually unfurls the dynamic between Chloe and Tyler, who are close in age but far apart in maturity. They’re minors in the modern world, where naivete is a currency that buys a one-way ticket to the obliteration of their innocence. Alcohol, drugs and whatever certain hell teenagers get up to online are all fair game. 

But the film stops short of feeling like an after-school special with a supernatural twist. Soderbergh’s ghost camera is not here to preach, it’s here to observe, and it’s within those observations that Koepp builds out a tale that is both cautionary and honest. Rebekah and Chris can barely make their children interact, let alone get along. With all of the impact it’s having on their two high schoolers, it’s straining their marriage even more. Chris is open and warm, while Rebekah is glacial and keeps her mind on the stresses of work. And when Chloe starts to get a sense that someone, or something, is watching her, her parents respond accordingly. Rebekah refutes Chloe’s claims and insists that she needs time to process what has happened to her. Chris, on the other hand, can’t stand that Rebekah won’t consider therapy for their daughter, and in turn, becomes something of a therapist himself.

As the ghost peers on, gazing at Chloe and Chris’ conversations from mere feet away, “Presence” hits a stunning emotional stride. Chris Sullivan and Callina Liang’s touching, believable chemistry provides the movie’s emotional foundation. After the presence makes itself known to their entire family, Rebekah shuts down, still unable to give her daughter the support she needs, gravitating toward her beloved first-born Tyler, whom she encourages despite his progressively bad behavior. But sitting in Chloe’s room, Chris tells his daughter that he understands her and he believes her theories about what is happening wholeheartedly. The affection is so strong that it feels like they’re conjuring something out of thin air. Their mutual trust fills the room, and suddenly, it’s all too easy to feel like we’re imposing.

Soderbergh’s camera moves slowly enough for the viewer to forget that they’re an active part of his film, letting each long, single-shot take wander as it would if we were surveying the house ourselves. That’s part of the spectral magic at play in “Presence.” To our knowledge, this ghost has no emotions. We don’t know its past or its personality (if it even has either). But as events play out and details stack on top of one another, the audience is called to project their feelings into this being. How is it feeling, what does it want to say? The choice is up to us. At other times, the camera bolts forward and up a set of stairs, reminding the viewer that this spirit must be lingering in the earthly realm for a reason.

The most thrilling part of “Presence” is determining that reason. We watch as things grow darker, and as Rebekah and Tyler close themselves off to the chaos invading their home. They cannot and will not see it, and their myopia stands at odds with the serenity one can achieve by accepting that there are forces far greater than themselves. The ghost itself is limited by how much and how often it can intervene, and when Koepp dives headfirst into the prickly topic of choice and control, things become slightly more transparent, but not too quickly. 

“Presence” unfolds like an electrifying mystery novel, asking us to pay attention to the details tucked away between the lines. Though it’s an economical movie in every sense — a small cast, a single location, a brief 85-minute runtime — its layers are intricately crafted and begging to be examined closely. Soderbergh forces his audience to remain open to the possibility of other realms by conveying exactly what it would be like to be trapped in one, begging to be acknowledged. As “Presence” suggests, maybe that disconnection isn’t so different from how we’re already living.