Presence (2025)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Ghost Family

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Steven Soderbergh's simple, elegantly-told ghost story Presence — in which the camera adopts the ghost's point of view — relies on vivid characters and emotional situations, suffering only from a somewhat thin climax.

A lonely, restless spirit roams through an empty house. Its roaming is interrupted by a real estate agent (Julia Fox), who shows the house to an interested family, the Paynes. For the spirit, time moves in little leaps. Next thing, the Paynes are moved in and already arguing. Dad Chris (Chris Sullivan) worries about daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), who recently lost her best friend to a drug overdose. Meanwhile, mom Rebecca (Lucy Liu) seems to lavish extra attention on her son Tyler (Eddy Maday), a swimming champion.

Tensions simmer. Things get weirder when Tyler brings home Ryan (West Mulholland), the most popular kid in school and someone Tyler is eager to please. Meanwhile, Ryan takes a liking to Chloe. But Chloe has begun to experience strange things in her room, first just feelings, but then things being moved or even smashed. The Paynes must learn the secret of the presence in their home.

Since his debut in 1989, sex, lies and videotape, director Soderbergh has continued to find innovative ways to tell stories, whether they be creative or technical, and he does it again with Presence. The simple idea of telling the story from the literal point of view of the ghost — although it does require many elaborate and lengthy tracking shots — is highly effective.

And, since we are only eavesdropping on the family members, we pick up only bits and pieces of what's really going on. But screenwriter David Koepp (who previously worked with Soderbergh on Kimi) manages to make these pieces add up to a bigger picture; we feel we know this family. Tyler eventually comes to seem less heroic than he looks initially (he's something of a bully), and Chloe begins to reveal bits of bad behavior of her own, while Chris privately reveals doubts and pain that he keeps from his family.

Presence falters with the use of an antagonist employed to wrap things up, and the idea feels underdeveloped, a bit rushed. It ruins the spell. But the movie pulls itself back together with a powerful final moment, sending you out into the world, spine-a-tingling.