Steven Soderbergh returned to Sundance in 2024 with indie horror film “Presence.” Now, the feature will be haunting theaters one year later thanks to distributor Neon.
“Presence” centers on a family of four, played by Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Eddy Maday, and Callina Liang, who move into a haunted house after a real estate agent (Julia Fox) convinces them it’s the perfect property. Liang’s character Chloe quickly realizes there is a titular presence that may or may not be sinister, though…
The logline reads: “A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they’re not alone.”
West Mulholland also stars. “Presence” is written by David Koepp and directed by auteur Soderbergh. The film debuted at Sundance 2024 and was recently announced as a Centrepiece screening for TIFF.
David Ehrlich’s IndieWire review compared the film to having a similar “feel of a video game or an immersive VR experience” in part due to the first-person point of view and continuous tracking shots.
“The fact that it still works as a movie is a testament to the cohesion of the cast and crew, with Soderbergh serving as a camera operator as well as director,” Ehrlich wrote. “It’s not quite a found footage movie — again, the camera isn’t really a camera, but the eyes of a ‘presence’ in the home. But it plays like one, stringing together snippets of conversation and isolated events separated by a few frames of black. […] Perhaps more importantly, for a haunted house movie, ‘Presence’ just isn’t very scary. Maybe it’s because we’re not waiting to see the ghost — we are the ghost. That’s an interesting idea in theory. But in terms of creating tension, a simple shadow at the end of a long dark hallway is so much more effective.”
Soderbergh told IndieWire that even he was skeptical about the innovative technicality of the POV sequences.
“I had real questions about the choice,” Soderbergh said during a Sundance panel. “I’ve been beating this drum hard for a long time, ’It’s never gonna work,’ and then, I’m like, ‘No, the only way to do it is you never, you never turn around.’”
He continued in the film’s press notes, “I’ve been convinced you don’t have a movie if you don’t have that — if you can’t see what the character’s feeling emotionally, you don’t have a movie. But here I am literally tearing down the structure that I’ve built. And my only justification is: Here, if you did a reverse, there wouldn’t be anything to see.”
“Presence” premieres January 17 in theaters from Neon. Check out the teaser below.
