The proverbial cat is out of the bag with regard to Steven Soderbergh’s new ghost story “Presence.”
It’s not a closely guarded secret. The trailers allude to it. Reviews outright discuss it. It’s a contemporary ghost story told from the perspective of the ghost. Knowing that, doesn’t necessarily spoil the experience of watching the movie. The ghost’s eye perspective is spelled out in the opening scenes as the camera floats around an empty house, eavesdropping on a real estate agent and a family of four who want to buy the house.
There’s a mother and father (played by Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan) and a son and a teenage son and daughter, Tyler and Chloe (played by Eddy Maday and Callina Liang).
Upon their first visit, Chloe senses something strange about the house. As it turns out, her supernatural instincts are spot on. The Better Homes and Gardens style home is haunted, a fact that becomes abundantly clear, to her and the rest of the family after they move in.
The ghost wants its presence to be known. Early on, it levitates books from Chloe’s bed over to her desk while she’s in her bathroom. When she walks back in to the room, she seems genuinely shocked at the discovery, but for some reason, chooses not to share anything about the strange experience with her family.
Everyone eventually suspects that something is going on, even if they are unwilling to accept the paranormal activity. Tyler is outright angered by even the suggestion of any supernatural events until the entire family witnesses an event right out of “The Exorcist” (1973) in which a bedroom is trashed right in front of their very eyes by some unseen entity. It’s a terrifying scene that should make an instant believer out of anyone, but for some reason, there is still resistance to accept what they all have witnessed.
At this point, pretty much everyone in the audience is wondering. “What exactly does it take?”
The plot drags on forever and one suspects that the movie is just an excuse for Soderbergh to show off his well-established skills as a cameraman. He often lenses the movies he writes and directs using the pseudonym Peter Andrews in the credits. His fans are all in with his loosely guarded secret which has gone on for decades.
Most of the movie consists of the first-person ghost floating around the house listening in on private conversations and observing private moments, like when Chloe and a friend are having sex in her room. As happens many times throughout the movie, the ghost respectfully retreats into Chloe’s closet, averting its eyes.
Most of the interaction between the family members is a mundane string of family problems of various kinds. The looming question revolves around the identity of the ghost: who the ghost is, how the ghost became a ghost, what the ghost is doing in this house and why it is largely sensed only by Chloe.
Eventually, all is revealed in a final reel that wraps everything up, perhaps a little too quickly in one quick, shocking scene. As in most good ghost stories, there is one unsettling detail at the very end that is meant to haunt movie audiences as they walk back to their cars.
Try as it might, “Presence” never really cashes in on its promise of an interesting premise. It’s fun when ghost stories turn the tables on the traditional storytelling. The Nicole Kidman movie “The Others” (2001) is a good example.
“Presence” doesn’t seem to know what to do with its novel point of view. There is a lot of inconsistency in the story relating to what the ghost can and cannot do, and when it decides to intercede and when it chooses not to. It’s puzzling.
What we have here is a story told from a perspective that is somewhat fresh and new. Sadly, it doesn’t really explore all the delicious possibilities.
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