Presence: A Ghost’s Eye View of Family Tension

Steven Soderbergh’s innovative first-person phantom style reinvents the haunted house, but misses the mark on true terror.

★★★☆☆

Horror, more than any other genre, has always been fertile ground for narrative experimentation. The solidly established tropes mean we’re rarely coming to a horror movie sight unseen – the doomed babysitter, the creepy child ghost, horny teenagers at poorly guarded summer camps or calls coming from inside the house. These plot devices are so familiar that lampooning them became a lucrative concept in the 90s and 2000s, both within and outside the genre (the Scream and Scary Movie franchises both revelled in ripping the rulebook to shreds and cleaned up at the box office as a result, and 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods did likewise in an even more knowing fashion). 

The fact that these tropes are as accustomed as they are means directors are free to toy with them, and we’ve seen a number of these experiments over the years, from The Blair Witch Project taking a conventional campfire story and subverting it via the means of found footage, to Skinamarink, Enys Men and In A Violent Nature stretching the boundaries of how horror stories can be filmed.

Soderbergh’s Presence takes things one step further. Whereas In A Violent Nature showed the summer camp story from the POV of a brutal serial killer, Presence’s entire conceit is that everything we view is from the ghost’s perspective. From this singular lens, we meander about a suburban house – the only location in the entire film since the ghost can’t leave it – roaming the corridors and the staircases, hiding just out of sight and eavesdropping on conversations. It’s a concept that’s blindingly innovative, but you can’t help feeling while watching it that there’s another version of this story that is much, much scarier.

Like many horror films, Presence begins with a family moving into an obviously haunted house after a personal tragedy. They’re escorted round the premises by Julia Fox (yes, that one, in a cameo that’s not as big as the marketing would suggest) and told the usual titbits of info – that the house is incredibly cheap and they should snap it up pronto. The family in question is harried mum Rebecca (Lucy Liu), downtrodden dad Chris (Chris Sullivan), champion swimmer/all-American teenage son (Eddy Maday) and shy, meek daughter Chloe (Callina Liang). The relationships between the four are rife with anxiety, as Rebecca dotes overbearingly on son Eddy, neglecting daughter Chloe in the process. Chris feels at odds with everybody, despairing of his son’s attitude towards his sister, and as with many horror films, shy, smart daughter Chloe is alone in being able to sense the presence that’s stalking them. Initially, the family struggles to believe her until the lights start rattling and they can’t ignore it any longer. Cue a visit from two ghostbusters Carl and Lisa to shed light on the spectre, à la Poltergeist and Paranormal Activity.

Presence is an intriguing film, and definitely enjoyable. It’s like slow cinema shifted into the horror genre – the horror flick Roy Andersson or Chantal Akerman might have made. Through the ghost’s eye view, we watch events unfurl in episodic segments as we gradually piece together what’s happening, with backstory revealed in conversations between the family members. We discover that Chloe is recovering from the loss of her friend Nadia from an apparent drug overdose, leading us to suspect the ghost whose perspective we’re viewing all this from might just be her. Naturally, this Big Brother or Peep Show-esque version of viewing takes a while to get going as your mind adjusts to it, but once it finds its stride, your intrigue is piqued. When Eddy brings home his friend Ryan, played with brilliant creepiness by West Mulholland, that’s when the dread truly begins.

This would all be well and good if the ghost actually did anything. The titular entity isn’t simply a surveyor and does involve itself fairly actively in the plot, but this is disappointingly rare and often ineffectual. Its litany of tasks involves carrying books from one part of the room to the other. It hides in wardrobes. It eavesdrops. It turns lights on and off and sits behind people while they peer at mirrors. All of this ekes out further drama as the characters become aware of the presence and its impact on their lives, and the ghost seems increasingly set on protecting Chloe from whatever evil deed Ryan is plotting – but this feels like a brilliant idea for a movie that would be better executed with a violent poltergeist instead of a friendly one. The ghost in question is as scary as Casper. It watches and listens, and at last attempts to intervene as Ryan, the real demon of the movie, makes his disturbing advances – but in not allowing the ghost to be the villain, the movie veers away from genuine terror and into something much tamer.

Billing Presence as a horror movie actually does it a disservice, since audiences will be expecting more of a scare. What it truly is, and what it does best, is tell a poignant family drama story. This is evidently where Soderbergh is most comfortable, and if this was the brief, he’s met it.

The Verdict

You can’t fault the inventive premise, and it boasts an impactful ending that elevates the entire plot, but while you’re watching the presence gliding about, dithering in hallways or cupboards, you’re often left feeling disappointed at a chance not taken.

Words by James Morton

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