You know the Tolstoy quote about all happy families being the same, but “every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way?” The quartet at the center of Steven Soderbergh’s ghost story Presence has refined their own particular brand of dysfunction to perfection. The mom, Rebecca (Lucy Liu), is a first-class control freak, has become involved in some shady financial dealings, and dotes on her teenage son, Tyler (Eddy Maday), in a way that would make Freud’s head explode. He’s a champion swimmer, and she has her...
- 1/20/2024
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
Unsane director Steven Soderbergh reunites with Kimi screenwriter David Koepp (Stir of Echoes) to give an innovative new spin on the quintessential ghost story. Presence frames its haunted events entirely from the perspective of its ghost. From the opening frame until the end credits, audiences see the thrilling story unfold through chilling narrative twists via Soderbergh’s experimentation with form and technique. Using the camera’s gaze as the ghost’s observing eyes isn’t the only trick up Soderbergh and Koepp’s sleeves, ensuring this exciting shakeup of the haunted house keeps you guessing.
The opening moments introduce the single location, an affluent suburban home just recently on the market, through tracking camerawork that captures the feel of a ghost peering around its haunt. It quickly navigates the halls and rooms, giving a quick overview of the layout as it seeks out a new arrival in the form of...
The opening moments introduce the single location, an affluent suburban home just recently on the market, through tracking camerawork that captures the feel of a ghost peering around its haunt. It quickly navigates the halls and rooms, giving a quick overview of the layout as it seeks out a new arrival in the form of...
- 1/20/2024
- by Meagan Navarro
- bloody-disgusting.com
For a prolific artist, a surge of creativity can often be synonymous with a dip in quality. Though not if you are Steven Soderbergh. He’s only continued to reinvent himself and forge ahead with new technology, subjects, and structural gambles. His latest film, Presence, is a haunting ghost tale wrapped in a nuanced family drama, and one of his most formally ambitious attempts yet. What if the camera, operated by Peter Andrews (aka Soderbergh), was the ghost? And every single shot in the film was a single take from this perspective? And, to further add to the self-imposed constraints, the ghost never leaves the house? From the very first shot, as we see the presence rapidly move through every room in the yet-to-be-sold empty house, laying the foundation for the horrors to take place, one senses Soderbergh is having a total blast with this concept. Reuniting after Kimi, David Koepp...
- 1/20/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
“Presence,” a ghost story directed by Steven Soderbergh, is set entirely inside a lovely, renovated, 100-year-old suburban home, and before the characters even have a chance to move in, the place is already occupied. The camera literally seems to be peering at things, staring out the second-floor windows, then coming down the stairs to witness the arrival of a harried real-estate agent, then the family of four she’s about to sell the house to. Darting from room to room in an unbroken wide-angle-lens shot, the camera gives us an impromptu tour of the house, letting us drink in the crisp mint-green walls, the vintage wood that lines everything, the ancient smoke-glass mirror and polished oak-board floors and elegant sprawling kitchen. Yet this is no mere real-estate porn. For the entire rest of the movie, Soderbergh employs that roving, bobbing and weaving voyeuristic camera’s-eye view. “Presence” might just be...
- 1/20/2024
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
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