PRESENCE dir. Steven Soderbergh
by Sienna Axe
1/23/24 @ 8:00 pm, Eccles Theatre
A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they’re not alone. (via Sundance)
Sienna: Unfortunately, the thing that will stick with me most about Presence is how motion sick it made me—and that’s saying something for someone who has never had any issues reading in the car. But there is a lot to love about it, even if some of the acting pushes it more into cult classic territory. I don’t see that as the actors’ fault so much as the overt, stilted screenplay; the cast of characters feels like an odd collection of half-remembered tropes. The only consistent exception is the dad (Chris Sullivan), who has either somehow managed to wrestle his lines into a believable shape or was given more grounded material to work with by the screenwriter.
That said, there are some very good moments. Lucy Liu, especially, gets the chance to shine in a scene that made my skin crawl. At its best, the film reaches a healthy level of self-awareness similar to Insidious or Malignant; at its worst, its more serious moments are undercut by a lack of clear characterization.
The one truly great thing about the film is its use of the camera. Ironically, because the literal “presence” whose perspective it occupies is the one character with no lines, it’s also the one that feels the most three-dimensional. The more I think about it—which things it examines closely, which things it turns away from—the more I think it would reward a second (or third) watch. It also gives the whole thing a very found-footage feel; though there’s no camera that the other characters are aware of, having the perspective limited to what the presence chooses to look at—all real-time conversations captured in ultra-long takes—does well to give the film a sense of claustrophobia.
Ultimately, Presence is a cool concept hampered by the fact that the screenplay—and some of the acting—is just not very good. That said, I do love that it was made—and I absolutely think it’s worth watching, especially if you like slightly-campy, mid-budget horror.
