In Presence, Steven Soderbergh takes a new approach to ghost stories, fails to sell a clever twist, and reminds me yet again that when I multitask while watching movies I tend to miss important details. An intriguing film that nonetheless feels more like an experiment than a fully thought through production, Presence deserves its fans but is still a hard one to recommend.

Soderbergh tends to make two types of movies–fully formed productions that have mainstream entertainment value, and experimental low-budget dalliances where the audience tends to take second thrift to filmmaking technique. Presence unfortunately falls in the latter camp, which is a shame given its potential to be explosively powerful.

Cleverly told through the eyes of a ghost, Presence follows a family that moves into a new house–even though the family is on the verge of collapsing. The mom (Lucy Liu) has potentially been committing crimes, the husband (Chris Sullivan) is considering divorce, the teenage son (Eddy Maday) is a dick, and the daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) is struggling with the sudden death of her best friend. Chloe senses a presence in the house and begins to see signs of a haunting, especially when hanging out with her brother’s friend Ryan (West Mulholland). 

Much of the movie feels like snippets capturing moments in time, but Soderbergh, working from a script by David Koepp), is indeed laying the foundations of a story with surprising focus and purpose. Due to partial multitasking or my own stupidity, some of that purpose went over my head on first viewing–and yet even after processing the revelations Soderbergh and Koepp give us, I remain frustrated that Presence isn’t a better film.

With intriguing cinematography and unique concept, Presence largely holds your attention, even if the story and acting feel a bit like something you’d expect from a student film. The whole film feels sort of cheap, as if you’re watching exactly what it is: Soderbergh working off a shoestring budget so that he can play around with new camera angles. 

There is a big reveal, as well as a subtle twist/surprise (that a fellow critic had to educate me on post viewing), that left me wishing Mainstream Soderbergh had arisen during production. What we get instead is an unearned and undersold third act in which the worst actor of the bunch (due to talent or screenplay, I can’t tell) gets the biggest payoff and an insultingly rushed climax that involves a three-second and ridiculously lame/unrealistic fight that literally made me laugh out loud in my plane seat at the ridiculousness of it all. This is a low-budget, artsy thriller of sorts so it by no means requires an epic showdown with flame throwers and explosives, but the ending feels like Soderbergh simply didn’t care.

The twist, which as mentioned before initially went over my head, is so subdued it barely registers. It’s as if Soderbergh decided that since Presence was an indie film the ending had to be “indie nuanced.” A good twist ending should leave you breathless and saying “Holy shit” aloud, something that Mainstream Soderbergh would understand. The twist here, even after acknowledging it, may make the movie more respectable but not more enjoyable.

It’s a shame, because as good as elements of Presence are, one can only wonder what this premise could have been in the hands of a director more interested in making a great movie–not an experimental one.

Review by Erik Samdahl.