Directed By Steven Soderbergh

Starring – Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, Chris Sullivan

The Plot – A family becomes convinced they are not alone after moving into their new home in the suburbs.

Rated R for violence, drug material, adult language, sexuality and teen drinking.

PRESENCE – Official Trailer – In Theaters January

POSITIVES

Reinventing ghost films is a tricky proposition, especially considering the creative well has been run dry of ideas and directions for quite sometime, but “Presence” finds newly exciting ways to inspire an audience, beginning directly within the confines of its first person cinematography, which pits us directly in the perception of the haunting spirit, instead of the unknowing family that moves in. While the concept of POV photography is certainly nothing original for cinema, its usage here not only elicits unlimited accessibility into experiences and conflicts that surround these family members individually, but also establishes the same looming feeling of ominousness that emanates from so many of these movies, but this time with an air of ambiguity to its creativity that constantly shifts and deviates away from expectations, with each passing scene. The photography itself, also from Soderbergh, smoothly floats and winds its way throughout this house in ways that properly illustrate a pursuing supernatural presence, without even a single instance of noticeable obstacle or influence from the assembled steps or walls that it casually drifts through, all the while enacting some spontaneous screen shakes along the presentation that effortlessly illustrate a growing tension of discontent from this undefined atmospheric resonance, even if we the audience are constantly one step ahead of the characters, in terms of advantageous knowledge. In addition to audaciously inspiring framing that never cheats or relents its compelling gimmick, the film isn’t exactly the horror or psychological thriller that was advertised, instead humbling itself on the kind of heartfelt humanity that outlines the endless purgatory of the afterlife, particularly in the inability of halting the inevitable that this family’s growing disconnect deduces them towards overlooking. While the script and the 81-minute run time obviously doesn’t delve as wide as the generational exploration as something like 2016’s “A Ghost Story”, there’s something endearing about the way Soderbergh outlines the concept of unfinished business in the depths of this lingering entity, with an evolving mystery towards the film’s climactic third act that steers it towards sentimental, without the need to feel unnecessarily schmaltzy or melodramatic to the tonal integrity that maintains its mystique throughout the engagement, all the while leading to a big third act reveal that does surprisingly piece together a far more enlightening bigger picture, despite building motions that occasionally errored on the side of convoluted storytelling with an emergingly unforeseen direction. As expected from the genre fake-out of playing on the audience’s preconceived expectations of what ghost movies should look and feel like, the film is quite light on scares, but limitless on the tragic factor that surrounds its narrative, particularly in the depths of its central family, who feel plagued by an air of inevitability that they can’t change, as a result of their own pocketed dynamics. The two bonds between Mother and Son, and father and daughter, effectively sew the seeds of distancing in ways that present unlimited opportunities for the conflicts that materialize within each of their characters, and while not every subplot is pursued with the same kind of focus and resolution as the unfortunate one that the script chooses to go with, in regards to a daughter’s way of killing loneliness, it serves as a bit of a cautionary tale for familial isolation that serves as their eventual undoing, with an aforementioned gut-wrenching climax that delivers a leveling impact for anyone who found ways to invest in these characters. Lastly, the performances are a mixed bag, but I found the work of Callina Liang, as the family daughter Chloe, to offer a somberly stinging debut that appraises no shortage of empathetic value to the integrity of her character’s design. While everyone else in this family either felt ingenuine or overly dramatic, Liang’s naturalistically subtle approach to grief during isolated coping is what ultimately endeared herself to me, with a tender vulnerability that you can’t help but feel empathetic towards. Chloe also being the only one that senses this unnatural essence in the air challenges Liang to simultaneously convey fear and curiosity in the ways she ties it to a recent tragedy of someone so close to her, and though we the audience don’t know that to be exactly true or not, it does offer the single biggest example of her character’s loneliness, in which she seeks to establish a face to something that she can’t properly define.

NEGATIVES

This is a movie that deserved to be so much better than it actually was, but a few key hinderances kept it from reaching its true potential, beginning with editing schemes that didn’t mesh as effectively enticing as the aforementioned POV perception that steered the entirety of the film’s focus. Because we’re emanating from the perspective of a paranormal, scenes abruptly end without inclination, with sporadic time jumps in the timeline of this family that really distracts in forcing the audience to piece together just how much time has passed from one frame to the next. This wouldn’t be such a major issue if the production found subtly inventive methods to begin and end each vital sequence, but considering the entirety of the film’s run time enacts so many of these individualized incidents, it makes the growing conflict feel episodic, all the while leaving some subplots with the characters completely unexplored and unresolved in ways that made me wonder why they even brought them to light in the first place. One such example pertains to Lucy Liu’s character scheming money from her company, and though it serves as a vocalized notoriety to her husband mentioning it during an isolated scene of his own, it’s never mentioned again throughout the duration of the run time, serving as one of the only legitimate instances where some kind of characterization is given to her character, just not the kind that leads to any semblance of redeeming value. Instead, a majority of the evolving run time’s development is given to Chloe and this afterthought of a romance that not only brandishes some of the film’s weakest and unintentionally hilarious dialogue between them, but also takes this profound familial drama and dumps it on its head with a seedily slimy third act conflict that feels like it comes completely from another movie entirely. While the red flags are certainly there early, the execution of such leaves more questions than answers, with noticeable plot holes in both the big reveals of her love interest and some unforeseen plot holes in what we’re asked to go along with, which grows all the more unconvincing the more I keep thinking about it. This leads to some conveniences during the third act that we’re forced to go along with, in order to piece together how the conflict gets resolved, and while the ending moments of the film do beneficially lead to a profoundly rich and sentimental ending that stings after one character falls to their knees in agony, it comes mere moments after a physical conflict which a few members of my audience (Myself included) found hilarious, particularly for how quickly rushed the resolution overwhelmed the emotional impact of the sequence that it adorned. Finally, I previously mentioned that Callina Liang is the only person in the ensemble giving a legitimate performance, and that’s because everyone else feels so artificially manufactured, as a result of the blandness or exaggerated emotionality that they bring to their respective roles. The former of those definitions pertain to both Liu and Sullivan, who despite a meticulously defined love for each of their respective favorite children, feel so void of personality or presence in ways that allow them to stand out as valuable members of the proceedings, specifically Sullivan, who unlike Liu, never gets a single opportunity to show some fiery emotional range. As for the latter side eliciting exaggerated deliveries, I firmly state unabashedly that West Mulholland and Eddy Maday both compromise every scene or sequence that they’re asked to accommodate, with the most distractingly abrasive influence of their deliveries that make their characters feel like types, instead of living, breathing entities. Maday constantly feels like he’s shouting in every scene that involves a subdued response from him, and though Mulholland is given the second most screen time behind Liang, he pays it off with one-dimensionality in ways that evaporate the palpability of his character’s evolution, all the while sprouting some of the most CW channel brand of dialogue that compromised some of the most importantly urgent scenes of the entire movie.

OVERALL
“Presence” shows off one of film’s most expansively evaporative directors capturing our attention with a scope and scale as small and intimate as anything that he’s ever commanded, with a first-person perspective that ventures where no film has gone before. Despite uneven performances and abruptly individualized editing schemes, the film is held together not only by the uniqueness of its articulate concept, with profound sentiments scattered to a bigger picture puzzle, but also a cunning deviation on preconceived genre expectations, resulting in a film with less horror, and more heart to its haunting appeal

My Grade: 6.5 or C