The digital camera is the ghost in Steven Soderbergh’s chillingly efficient, experiential haunted home drama “Presence.” The filmmaker traps the viewers in an exquisite suburban house, letting us drift via rooms with this curious being, out and in of delicate conversations as we (and the ghost) attempt to piece collectively a puzzle blindly.
Typically in haunted home motion pictures the place a brand new household strikes in and begins sensing unusual issues, the ghost is aware of precisely what they need — often their home again. On this one, the presence doesn’t have such a transparent goal. It’s extra confused, wandering round and investigating the environment, like a benevolent amnesiac. Sometimes, although, large feelings erupt, and issues shake violently.
Largely, they go unnoticed. They observe the chipper actual property agent (Julia Fox) making ready for a exhibiting, the portray crew, considered one of whom believes there’s one thing round, and eventually the household and all of the complexities of its dynamics. Lucy Liu (a pleasant, wickedly humorous scene-stealer) is the mother, Rebecca, a rich, profitable, type-A lady hyper centered on the success of her eldest, a teenage boy named Tyler (Eddy Maday). The daddy, Chris (Chris Sullivan), is extra of the nurturer, involved about their teen daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) within the aftermath of her buddy’s surprising loss of life.
There’s a household drama transpiring inside the home, solely a few of which is able to make sense in the long run. We overhear Rebecca drunkenly telling Tyler that all the pieces she does is for him. We hear in as Chris confides to somebody on the cellphone a few hypothetical accomplice being concerned in one thing unlawful and whether or not they nonetheless could be if legally separated. We see Tyler usually together with his head buried in his cellphone. After which there’s Chloe: Unhappy, rebellious Chloe, who’s the one one to note that they’re not alone. She’s had the current trauma, in spite of everything, and shortly she’s beginning a factor with Tyler’s floppy haired, cool man buddy Ryan (West Mulholland). They hook up, they drink, they do medicine, and Chloe will get to flee from her personal ideas — no less than for a short while. Ryan appears to be like straight out of a mid-90s film, he’s an indignant, aggrieved child who assures Chloe that she has the facility to resolve how this all goes.