Presence Review (Film, 2025)
content warning: grieving, drug use, alcohol use, foul language, intimate/sexual content, sexual assault, violence against women, child neglect
We follow something wandering through an empty house. A realtor (a scene-stealing Julia Fox, making the most of a small but essential role) notices that the house has been left in a state of disarray right before her first clients come to view the house. The Payne family–ambitious mother Rebekah, cautious and caring father Chris, star athlete Tyler, and grieving teenager Chloe–put in an offer immediately to lock in a spot in the best high school they can for their son Chris. The Presence sees everything it wants to see, following the family as they float through their daily lives, not really seeing the big picture of what’s happening to all of them. This is the death of the All-American family, show in first person view from a spirit completely attached to the house, not the home.
Director Stephen Soderbergh is no stranger to experimental, deeply psychological horror films. He previously directed Unsane, a claustrophobic horror/thriller about a woman trapped in a mental hospital, filmed entirely on an iPhone. Presence is even more moldbreaking than Unsane, creating a Brechtian layer of separation between the Payne family’s lives and the audience through the use of the Presence.
This spiritual Presence is a fascinating conceit for a horror film. While horror luminaries like Stephen Graham Jones, Clive Barker, and Gwendolyn Kiste have experimented with a detached supernatural presence as the narrator of a story, I’m struggling to think of another film that employs the same trick. The Presence, silently bobbing and weaving throughout the house, is a transient, almost-voyeuristic narrator passively reacting to the Payne family. The abilities of the Presence are established early on. It can manipulate physical objects like books and doors, but can’t pass through walls. It can listen to anything within earshot and look through windows, but it cannot leave the house. This creates a fascinating, fragmented storytelling device that relies on the audience to put the pieces together.
For example, Lucy Liu stars as Rebekah. We know right away the kind of woman Rebekah is. She’s willing to do anything to give her star athlete son Tyler every advantage in life, even if it may neglect the needs of her daughter Chloe. Chloe’s best friend passed away and Rebekah is not equipped to deal with her suffering; her response to her husband’s attempts to get Chloe more help is to say she just needs time. Meanwhile, we also learn that Rebekah is somehow involved in some kind of illegal deal that she “can’t know about,” furiously deleting emails and working around the clock to secure the future she wants for her son. We know these details because the Presence just happens to notice Rebekah in these moments; meanwhile, the rest of the family is in the house, living their own lives, and we know nothing about what they’re doing.
The Presence follows them all eventually. Chris Sullivan plays Chris, the father, and he knows a whole lot more than he lets on about what his wife is actually doing. From quiet texts and calls to a lawyer friend for hypothetical advice to taking steps to protect Chloe from further harm, Chris is tyring to pull the strings to lift his whole family up. No one will be left behind if he has way.
Tyler, played by Eddy Maday, and Chloe, played by Callina Liang, are opposite sides of the same coin. Every advantage Tyler has–his charm, his natural athleticism, his popularity, his mother’s unerring devotion–is a disadvantage for Chloe. She’s quiet, she’s not a star, she’s certainly not popular, and her mother doesn’t want to invest any energy in her. Tyler can weaponize his mother’s strength against the family, while Chloe can barely get her father to publicly acknowledge when the balance is tipped too far. Much like the Presence itself, Chloe actually has quite a lot of depth to her if you pay attention; however, much like the Presence itself, most people would rather ignore the quiet presence of a girl like Chloe in favor of the easy to recognize strengths of a boy like Tyler.
David Koepp’s screenplay is a masterful application of theatrical tropes for cinematic terror. It’s not uncommon to see an ensemble play with a similar structure to Presence. The main players circle around the same living space, giving the audience brief glimpses into their lives. A few key supporting players make their mark known on the narrative, offering the audience essential context and clues into the lives being lived offstage. By the end, all secrets will be revealed and that shiny antique mirror on the wall (or whatever called upon object in the first act) will be the lynchpin to the entire piece. The difference here is the Presence itself defines what the audience can see, acting as both camera and operator for a dream house hiding unimaginable nightmares.
Presence is quite slow moving until the final moments. It’s easy to lose your connection to the narrative and drift away when scenes linger or days disappear in the blink of an eye. The novelty here is the conceit of the Presence, not the plot itself, which takes a back seat to listlessly drifting through time. By the time the stakes shift, it may feel like too little, too late. A mirror might hold a secret, but a ghost that can interact with objects and move anywhere in a house certainly feels like it can make itself more known in an experimental haunted house film. But who would listen to me? I’m not a star like Tyler.
Presence was accessed through Kanopy.