Steven Soderbergh’s signature style is one of cool detachment to his characters. His films tackle people in crisis, but the tone is always one of an ersatz cinema verité witness to what is happening to them. In PRESENCE, he has channeled that aesthetic into a ghost story told from the spirit’s point of view. Literally. As the unidentified presence moves from room to room in the century-old house that it haunts, we see everything from its POV. It provides a reason for the stunning tracking shots in which the spirit flits from room to room, and Soderbergh’s precise, deliberate choices imbue the flitting with an emotional immediacy that is remarkable. From the first sequence that shows the spirit rushing with, ahem, breathless, anticipation to meet someone arriving at the front door that the spirit itself cannot cross, to the way the camera jerks as the spirit takes refuge in a closet, unwilling to watch what is happening just outside it.
We start with the house empty, maybe at sunrise, maybe at sunset, as we visit the rooms in a palpable state of waiting. That waiting comes to an end with the arrival of the property’s real estate agent (Julia Fox) who arrives moments before her clients, a deeply troubled family of four whose dysfunction will unfold as the spirit drops in on conversations and private moments of despair. Some issues, the patent distaste of the mother, Rebekah (Lucy Liu) for her teenage daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang), recovering from the overdose (accidental?) of her best friend, are obvious, as is the overweening favoritism Rebekah shows for her son, Tyler (Eddy Maday) the high school swimming phenom with a bright future in sports ahead of him. Others, such as the details of something sketchy Rebakah has done to further Tyler’s future are vague, though the anguish all of these things cause Christopher (Chris Sullivan), the long-suffering and passive pater familias is not. In one of the film’s most affecting moments, Christopher tries to connect with Chloe with a speech that is a quiet explosion of remorse about the state of his family, with Sullivan exposing the swiftly unclenching regret that his character has spent a lifetime subsuming in an attempt to keep things calm and orderly.
It is remarkable how much is conveyed with these smatterings of eavesdropping and spying. Rebekah always on her laptop or phone, smoothy hiding the screen from her husband. The camera, i.e. the spirit lingering over photos displayed on a side table. Christopher taking a phone call outside to ask questions of his caller that could shatter his family. Chloe, the only one to sense the spirit, weeping in her room where the spirit takes refuge in her closet, watching the goings-on through the slats in the shutter-like doors. Chole’s new boyfriend (West Mulholland)’s reasons for an obsession for orange juice. The writing by David Koepp, known more for effects-laden flicks, is as precise as Soderbergh’s direction, carefully unstudied, but brilliantly expository.
So are the reactions by the camera that convey the confusion, anger, curiosity, and empathy the spirit is experiencing, feelings that, as in all good ghost stories, manifest in ways that even the most skeptical family members cannot refute or explain away. For a character that is never seen nor heard, there is a distinct, vulnerable personality created for us in purely visual terms that is a thing of wonder and beauty.
So, too, are the philosophical musings about life and death the characters have, some of which, but not too many, that are answered by the sensitive (Natalie Woolams-Torres) brought in to investigate. She reveals an important clue about how differently time exists for the quick and for the dead, and adds to the pervading eeriness with the way she stops short at the threshold, but only for a moment.
An emotional thriller as well as a supernatural one, and both equally potent, PRESENCE provides an intriguing perspective on the classic haunting trope as it ponders the dark and light of humanity. Photographed with a subtle fish-eye lens that distorts reality just enough to be unsettling but not overwhelming, it provides an immersive experience of the other side unable to leave this plane of existence behind. Plus, finding out that real estate agents are bound by law to reveal paranormal activity makes for a film that is engrossing, riveting, and enlightening.
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