It’s a neat idea. A supernatural thriller told not from the point of view of the family whose well-appointed new suburban home appears to be haunted, but from the perspective of the ghostly entity lurking in one of the walk-in closets. The second collaboration between director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp (the first was the taut tech mystery Kimi), Presence rips up the conventions of the domestic possession genre. But while it’s an interesting exercise, it’s more of a teasing puzzle than a nail-biter. What’s more, it’s a puzzle that appears to have lost a few key pieces between the immaculately sanded floorboards. A hint of maternal criminality is dangled tantalisingly and then whisked out of the story; a brief appearance from a psychic (Natalie Woolams-Torres) does an awful lot of heavy lifting when it comes to shoring up the jerry-built final act.
Floating weightlessly around the rooms of the house, the camera (operated by Soderbergh, who also edits) is a key character. Keeping a distance – there are next to no closeups – it spies on the unwitting parents (Lucy Liu plays pitbull mum Rebekah; Chris Sullivan is her deflated-looking husband Chris); and their golden-boy son, Tyler (Eddy Maday). But the lens, and by extension whatever possibly malign spirit stalks the premises, seems most drawn to the teenage daughter Chloe (Callina Liang). She is, we sense, in imminent danger. However the element that makes this intriguing – the ghost POV shooting technique – is also a problem, undermining the suspense and distancing the audience from the vulnerable girl whose fate is in the balance.
In UK and Irish cinemas
