PRESENCE

I will forever be grateful that director Steven Soderbergh rolled back his retirement plans. He continues to gift audiences with fascinating and experimental films that have his signature style all over them. He’s released two films on 2025 with Black Bag and Presence, both written by David Koepp. Alliance Entertainment, Decal, and NEON are now releasing Presence on 4K and Blu-Ray.

Presence may seem like your typical haunted house story, but Soderbergh takes a fresh spin on the perspective at play. Chris Sullivan and Lucy Liu play Chris and Rebekah, a married couple who are going through turbulent times in their marriage while raising two teenagers. Their daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang), is grieving the sudden death of her friend while son, Tyler (Eddy Maday), is your standard cocky teenage guy who fights with his sister. The family moves into a new home with a new school district hoping this is a fresh start. Soon Chloe feels a presence in the house even though that wasn’t detailed in the real estate transaction.

Saying anything more about the plot would be diving into spoiler territory. I went into this film completely blind and that is the best approach at taking it all in. Steven Soderbergh acts as his own cinematographer and tells this story from an usual perspective – the presence. Yes, it’s as if Soderbergh is personifying the presence as it watches and reacts to what this family is doing. We see the presence walking around the house catching characters in the middle of a conversation, watching them enter the home or a bedroom, or follows them from the kitchen into the living room and so forth. Rarely is a haunted house story told through the perspective of the presence or supernatural force that is causing havoc on its inhabitants. It makes the jump scares all the more effective and realistic. The ending will hit you like a ton of bricks as it left my jaw on the floor. At only 80 minutes, Soderbergh has crafted a jolt of terror that feels all too real.

If you’re a fan of Soderbergh’s work, Presence is one to add to your list. I always appreciate a filmmaker testing his limits or the limits of storytelling.

SPECIAL FEATURES

There are no special features with this release.

Here’s a video I made for TikTok