Title – Presence (2024)

Director – Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s 11)

Cast – Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, Chris Sullivan, Lucy Liu

Plot – After moving into a seemingly idyllic family home, couple Rebekah (Liu) and Chris (Sullivan) and their teenage children Chloe (Liang) and Tyler (Maday) begin to suspect there is something else in the house with them.  

“There is an excellent man inside of you, Tyler. I would love to see him soon”

Review by Eddie on 04/06/2025

In one of the years most overt cases of mistaken marketing, Steven Soderbergh’s latest low-budget experiment Presence has been cast into the spotlight as a straight up haunted house genre affair with the gimmick of it being shot entirely from the POV of the ghostly apparition making its way around a family home recently purchased by a new set of inhabitants, something this film is absolutely not.

While it is indeed shot as if we the viewer were making our way around the house and observing/overhearing what is happening around us and while it does in fact on surface value centre around a family dealing with an unwanted guest in their new abode, Presence isn’t the film it was made out to be as Soderbergh and his screenwriting partner David Koepp (who collaborated on the recent release Black Bag also) are far more interested in the family drama/psychological thriller aspects of their tale rather than the horror/scare elements that their idea might have allowed them to mine.

Clocking in at a brief 80 minutes, there’s not a lot of meat on the bones of Presence and more antsy viewers may find themselves getting distracted thoughts within the confines of the home owned by Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan’s Rebekah and Chris and their children Chloe and Tyler (two impressive performances from Callina Liang and Eddy Maday respectively) but there’s enough uniqueness to this idea and some unexpected topical themes to explore that ensures Presence isn’t a pure party trick.

Exploring themes relating to teenage trauma, substance abuse and family bonds, Presence is as much of a pure drama as it is anything else and while the concept could have been ripe for the picking when it comes to jump scares or ghoulish terror, it’s nice to see both Soderbergh and Koepp challenge themselves to give us something we didn’t expect, even if the marketing team working for distribution company Neon need to be held to account for their basically false promotional campaign.

In a time and space where its becoming increasingly tough to draw people into cinemas and for products to stand out from the crowd, it’s a shame a film like Presence has been marketed in the way it has, likely jading potential future willing cinemagoers from taking the plunge on original content in fear they will be getting more products that don’t fit the bill of what they’ve been promised.

If you head in expecting the right film, Presence could be exactly what you’re after. If you dive in chasing horror filled delights, Soderbergh’s latest is going to be far from what you were desiring.

Final Say –

More of an interesting concept rather than a highly interesting film, Presence has its moments but doesn’t manage to make much of a mark or achieve what it might have achieved with such a great idea/delivery method.

2 1/2 cupboards out of 5