{"id":10873,"date":"2025-01-25T23:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T04:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=10873"},"modified":"2025-02-17T18:14:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T23:14:03","slug":"presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/01\/25\/presence\/","title":{"rendered":"Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Presence<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neon\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 85 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, drug material, language, sexuality, teen drinking)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Steven Soderbergh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Koepp\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Zack Ryan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 24, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddie Maday, West Mulholland, Natalie Woolams-Torres, Lucas Papaelias, Julia Fox.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0Anybody who goes to see Presence<\/strong> expecting something along the lines of Poltergeist or The Amityville Horror is going to be sorely disappointed. It\u2019s not that kind of horror movie. There are no jump-scares or showy CGI effects. I would describe it as a dysfunctional family drama dressed up as a ghost story. It\u2019s actually rather brilliant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The hard part of reviewing Presence<\/strong> is telling you what it\u2019s about without giving too much away. I strongly believe everybody should go in not knowing a lot about it. It\u2019s more fun that way, wouldn\u2019t you agree? Okay, here we go.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll start by telling you the story unfold entirely from the perspective of the presence. It\u2019s a spirit or ghost. Who it is, we don\u2019t know. Not yet. It lives in an empty house. That is, until a new family moves in. It consists of a mother Rebecca (Liu, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), a self-centered career woman who might be involved in some sort of illegal business. Her husband Chris (Sullivan, This Is Us) carries the entire emotional weight of the family, especially as it pertains to teenage daughter Chloe (Liang, Tell Me Everything) who\u2019s depressed over the recent death of her best friend. Rebecca dotes on son Tyler (newcomer Maday), an arrogant high school swim champ who takes pride in being a total dick. He\u2019s a chip off his mother\u2019s block.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Chloe is the first to realize they\u2019re not alone in the house. She senses the presence when the family visits the house for the first time. She sees evidence of its existence on multiple occasions. She thinks it might be the spirit of her departed friend. Naturally, her family doesn\u2019t believe her. They think it\u2019s a manifestation of her grief. Then they see it in action. It trashes Tyler\u2019s room after he brags about humiliating a female classmate with his best bud Ryan (Mulholland, Dark Harvest). Denial turns into fear quickly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0And now for a few words about this Ryan guy. He\u2019s the most popular boy at school or so Tyler says. He\u2019s a confident, smooth-talking type who takes a liking to Chloe. Would it be a spoiler to reveal he\u2019s a total creep? Nah, I didn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Only Steven Soderbergh could shape a ghost story like he does with Presence<\/strong>. He hasn\u2019t always been consistent with his work. He\u2019s made several great ones (Out of Sight, The Limey and Traffic), some bad ones (Solaris, The Laundromat and all three Magic Mike movies) and a few pretentious ones (Full Frontal, The Girlfriend Experience). He likes to experiment with style. He filmed his 2018 thriller Unsane entirely on an iPhone (under his frequently used pseudonym \u201cPeter Andrews\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Soderbergh uses his own name on Presence<\/strong> in which the camera plays a pivotal role. It represents the POV of the spirit who watches the family drama develop, just watching and waiting for something that will reveal its reason for being there in that<\/em> house with that <\/em>family. We see only what the presence sees. We get crucial information in bits and pieces. Soderbergh gets that film is primarily a visual medium. He\u2019s fluent in film language. His camera tells the story well thanks to his expert cinematography and editing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0He\u2019s helped greatly by a well-written screenplay from David Koepp (Jurassic Park) that serves mainly as a roadmap for the direction of the story. It merely points the way for Soderbergh\u2019s camera. However, and it\u2019s the movie\u2019s only flaw, it doesn\u2019t develop all of the plot threads it introduces like Rebecca\u2019s questionable business dealings and her troubled marriage to Chris. Then again, the plot isn\u2019t really about these things. It\u2019s about something much deeper. Specifically, it\u2019s about the choices, bad and good, people make and how it affects them in the long, long run- i.e. the Afterlife.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting in Presence<\/strong> is superb. Liu excels at playing cold, heartless characters with no empathy. She does it again here and does it so effectively; it makes more of an impact when she finally breaks at some point. Sullivan is great as the husband struggling to hold it all together without a solid support system. It\u2019s hard when you have a wife who dismisses all your concerns by saying things will sort themselves out with time. Maday, in his acting debut, believably depicts an entitled a**hole whose behavior towards his sister is borderline abusive. His attitude towards women in general is appalling.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The real star of Presence<\/strong>, after the title character of course, is Liang. I\u2019ve never seen her before. She\u2019s awesome as Chloe, a troubled girl dealing with a lot. She makes you feel sympathy rather than pity for her character. She doesn\u2019t overplay the role of somebody with a gift. She doesn\u2019t see ghosts; she only senses them. It scares the hell out of her just the same. She doesn\u2019t overdo it in this area either. Hers is a beautifully controlled performance. I think we\u2019re looking at star here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0January is a month typically reserved for crappy horror movies. It makes me wonder why the studio decided to release Presence <\/strong>now. It\u2019s far from crappy. It\u2019s effectively eerie without resorting to loud jump-scares or monstrous apparitions. It\u2019s more of a state of mind. It probably won\u2019t please mass audiences looking for something more mainstream. Maybe that\u2019s why Neon dumped it in January. I can only hope its audience discovers it. It\u2019s a truly original piece that doesn\u2019t deserve to be overlooked.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presence (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neon\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 85 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, drug material, language, sexuality, teen drinking)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Steven Soderbergh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Koepp\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Zack Ryan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 24, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddie Maday, West Mulholland, Natalie Woolams-Torres, Lucas Papaelias, Julia Fox. Rating: *** \u00bd \u00a0Anybody who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Presence-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C920&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10873"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10878,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10873\/revisions\/10878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}