X
- R
- Neon
- 1 h 25 m
- R
- Neon
- 1 h 25 m
Summary A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they’re not alone.
Directed By: Steven Soderbergh
Written By: David Koepp
- R
- Neon
- 1 h 25 m
- R
- Neon
- 1 h 25 m
Presence
80
User Score
User reviews are not available yet
Summary A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they’re not alone.
Directed By: Steven Soderbergh
Written By: David Koepp
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 19 Critic Reviews
80
84% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
16% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 19 Critic Reviews
80
84% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
16% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
As haunted house stories go, Presence is more interested in lurking dread than bloody jump scares, slowly ratcheting up the tension with long, uninterrupted takes.
When Presence delves into the more typical trappings of the genre — everything from a scene where a psychic investigates the house to moments of seance-like invocation — it still retains its unique voice, thanks not just to Soderbergh but Koepp.
Penned by David Koepp, who previously wrote Soderbergh’s tight and thrilling chamber piece Kimi, Presence is a darkly comic and slow-burn genre film that presents as both a haunted house tale and an exploration of a strained family dynamic—shown entirely through the perspective of its ghost.
Weaving in skillfully employed, grounded visual effects, it’s rather shocking just how much the ghost, sight unseen, feels like another character in the movie.
The film proves to be a sleek, efficient exercise, with Soderbergh riffing on the conventions of the haunted-house thriller while applying intelligence and technical mastery.
The problem is that, while the film is conceptually solid, its story gets shakier as it goes along.
Presence is a brisk 85 minutes, which is nice if you have dinner plans, but it also exposes limited storytelling ambitions. It’s a mid-season episode of TV. We don’t get to know much about the characters, and don’t care either way about their fate.
User Reviews
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