Presence: A waste of a unique perspective.

⭐⭐

Rob Ryan

Steven Soderbergh's Presence is an admirable but frustrating and maddening effort that I really wanted to like. A unique concept with the worst execution. The preview audience I saw this with last night were less than amused and had spent a consistent portion of the film, unintentionally laughing at moments that where intended to be effective and I would have been there with them had I hadn't tried to look for something within the film they couldn't see. Eventually I had to stop kidding myself. This is a real disappointment from a director who has never stopped reaching for greatness and has tried to branch out of his usual comfort zones, sometimes It works, not here.

The unique concept: Imagine a contemporary haunted house story from the literal POV of the ghost itself, We never see its true form nor get to hear it speak, It moves around a middle class suburban house never making a sound, eavesdropping on characters conversions before moving away to a different part of the house. Occasionally it will move objects, close the doors and cause isolated earthquakes in individual rooms. The new occupiers of this house include mother Rebekah (Lucy Liu) father Chris (Chris Sullivan) son Tyler (Eddy Maday) and daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) who is going through a hard time due to a friend who had recently overdosed.

The ghost in question minds its own business, often retreating to Chloe's wardrobe if it gets too bored, but Chloe starts to sense it more and more much to the dismay of her mother and brother, the former of which has no problem enabling her son's cruel behaviour at school and picking him as the favourite child. Could this be the ghost of Chloe's deceased friend from school? Or is its presence in the house completely random? More importantly, Who cares?

The biggest problem with this movie lies with the script penned by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Carlito's Way, Panic Room, Death Becomes Her, Mission Impossible, Snake Eyes, Zathura and more) his characters are thinly drawn and off the shelf, the dialogue is clunky and unnatural especially when it pertains to the younger characters and the plotting is pedestrian as it is unsatisfying, right down to the characters bringing in a psychic who just happens know more than they do. Then in that grand tradition of mainstream horror, there's always a character suffering from grief and trauma which feels less written and more placed in like a rubber stamp. These grievances and more, rob the film of any sort of atmosphere and tension as you are constantly reminded that you are watching a movie instead of something new and visceral, not helped by the fact that Zack Ryan's musical score doesn't fit the aesthetic of the film at all as he seems to be scoring it as if it's a lush 19th Century gothic horror which contradicts the intended minimalism of the final movie.

I don't want to be too harsh on the actors as they are only doing what the script requires for them to do but none of them nor do the film itself manage to overcome the limitations of the scripts lack of any sort of originality nor ideas. If there is one actor who I feel sorry for though, its West Mulholland who plays Tylers friend from school Ryan, it must have taken every muscle fibre of this guy's being to perform some of his dialogue with a straight face especially in the films climax which without spoiling too much, draws a fine line between camp and exploitative which made the final result feel very tasteless, the only thing I'm grateful for is that at least according to the end credits, there was an intimacy coordinator on set. Regardless, despite him causing the most amount of laughter in my audience, at least I can say he committed to the part. Lets hope this doesn't effect his career chances too much.

Soderbergh is an ambitious filmmaker and I don't blame him for trying something new, the film's initial set up isn't so bad, the POV cinematography could have worked if the people where much more interesting, the trailers for the film certainly give you a taste of what could have been. It certainly got me excited, but this script is just not it at all. I severely doubt this is gonna do well with mainstream audiences, not that it would have had a chance with them anyway as this certainly isn't what they are used too and there where several walk outs during the first 30 minutes. But something has certainly gone wrong somewhere if those who stayed are just laughing their way through it.

Also not enough Julia Fox.