Steven Soderbergh directs a shivery ghost story in "Presence," now haunting theaters with terrifying things that go bump in the night. If you're thinking what's so new about that, hold on. "Presence" turns the familiar into something fresh and frightening. And that takes talent.
The ever-delicious Lucy Liu stars as Rebekah Payne. This lady boss is out house hunting with her husband Chris (Chris Sullivan, so good as Toby in "This Is Us") and their two teen kids, Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday). Rebekah starts bidding instantly when realtor Cece (a fun Julia Fox) turns them on to a vintage, newly renovated beauty in an enviable school district.
The suburban home is big, roomy and empty, but the Payne family members are not alone as they nose around the place. A ghost is tracking their every move. Beware of motion sickness since the unseen spirit is actually the camera racing around like a bat out of hell.
Soderbergh is doubling once again as his own director of photography under the pseudonym Peter Andrews (and acting as his own editor, using the pseudonym Mary Ann Bernard – the names of his parents, by the way). This dude is tricky and well worth keeping an eye on.
Gimmicky? Maybe. But finding depth of feeling where you least expect it is a Soderbergh specialty. He kickstarted a revolution with 1989's "sex, lies and videotape," won an Oscar for 2000's "Traffic" (the same year he did "Erin Brockovich"), hit box-office gold with three "Ocean's Eleven" romps and then quit movies for four years to do risky TV ("The Knick") before moving on to indies such as "Unsane" and now "Presence."
Got that? No matter. To fully enjoy "Presence" you just need to focus on what the camera is seeing and stay alert for the family dynamics in the script by David Koepp, the writer on 2022's "Kimi." Something is not right about mom and dad, especially mom's dodgy doings at the office.
As for the kids, Tyler— mom's favorite— is a swimming champ and something of a bully. Chloe is hardly coping with the death of her high-school bestie Nadia of a drug overdose, though she is secretly hooking up with Tyler's bad-boy buddy Ryan (West Mulholland).
It's Chloe who first senses an alien presence when the family moves in. The ghost actually tidies up Chloe's room while she's showering. It's a wink of a plot wrinkle that suggests the ghost may be on Chloe's side, offering protection against societal pressures. The quiet grace of Liang's achingly vulnerable performance only strengthens that theory.
No spoilers, except to say that adding a psychic to the mix doesn't begin to tie up loose ends. Unlike the usual "Paranormal Activity" cheesefests, "Presence" is a psychological thriller above all else, less interested in jump scares and gore than exposing the violence of the mind.
It all comes to a head in an ending with the best kind of twists—the ones you don't see coming. "Presence" is the kind of movie mindbender that sneaks up on you and leaves you thinking long after it's over.
Shot over a scant 11 days with a tight running time of 85 minutes, "Presence" never moves far outside its single setting. But its dark implications about the big, wide world we call our own have the power to keep you up nights. Not for Soderbergh the easy comfort of sweet dreams.
