Since it’s January, there’s not much likely to be coming out that’s going to be all that good. However, I do live outside a major metropolitan area, so the awards bait stuff will start trickling out this time of year. I was going to try to check out one of the Best Picture nominees I missed when I noticed Steve Soderbergh’s name attached to what looked like a horror movie: Presence. That alone wasn’t enough to catch my attention per se, but then I read a short review’s tag line that sold me: like how last year’s In a Violent Nature showed a slasher movie from the killer’s perspective, Presence tells a ghost story from the ghost’s perspective.
I really need to see In a Violent Nature sometime, but in the meantime, Presence looked like a good bet.
Consisting of a series of longshots, the movie is indeed told through the eyes of a mostly unseen ghost. A family is moving into a house in order to take advantage of a nearby school system as mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu) wants her talented swimmer son Tyler (Eddy Maday) to excel, and she doesn’t seem to mind if he gets involved in sketchy behavior if he gets ahead in life. Her husband Chris (Chris Sullivan), meanwhile, is concerned about their daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) whose best friend recently died of what is implied to be a drug overdose. However, Chloe is a bit sensitive and sometimes looks in the direction of the ghost as it flits around the house, sometimes taking refuge in her closet.
As time passes, the ghost makes itself known by occasionally moving things around the room and even trashing the family’s belongings. But while the being does seem to follow around all four members of the family at different points, it spends the most time following Chloe. She suspects the presence is her dead friend, and the ghost, whoever it is, does intervene when her sketchy boyfriend Ryan (West Mulholland) tries to do some things behind her back. Ghosts, the movie tells us, all want something. What does this presence want? And what does it have to do with Chloe?
I remember reading once that the common criticism on Soderbergh’s movies is that they are all technically accomplished but can lack heart. In terms of technical accomplishment, I’d say that’s accurate. He is a director that likes to experiment, and the way the camera swoops around the inside of the house, watching the family and occasionally tossing something around, gradually tells the story of what’s going on. Soderbergh creates an interesting atmosphere and tone as the ghost/audience gradually learns more about the family, like how Rebecca seems to find humor in mean pranks her son gets into at school while Chris is far more concerned about Chloe as the movie opens than either Rebecca or Tyler are. There’s some good character work, and the final few scenes actually had Soderbergh’s camera angled in ways to make the human characters somehow look less human. There’s a lot to like on display here.
However, that lack of heart is also somewhat on display. In the final few minutes, a couple of plot reveals seem somewhat forced and unlikely, and the ghost’s identity was something I somewhat saw coming. None of these plot moments came out of nowhere or anything, but they still felt a little odd to me. But while I could see an inexperienced and naive Chloe falling for Ryan’s obvious BS lines, I likewise wasn’t sure why Rebecca had no issue with the story Tyler tells at around the midpoint of the movie. There’s a lot to like here, most notably how Soderbergh told the story, but some of the final details just didn’t work much for me. Still, not bad for a January movie.
Grade: B-
0 Comments