'Presence' Brings Director Steven Soderbergh's Distinct Vision to the Haunted Genre

Steven Soderbergh, a filmmaker who started in the independent scene, has perhaps become Hollywood's most ardent advocate for well-crafted genre cinema. He once thrived making acclaimed studio films like Out of Sight (1998), Erin Brockovich (2000), and the Ocean's trilogy (2001-07), back when star-studded genre pictures were studio mainstays. Now, in an era dominated by franchises and remakes, Soderbergh has returned to independent filmmaking, yet he continues to produce the kind of genre films Hollywood used to excel at—think the heist film Logan Lucky (2017), the thriller Unsane (2018), or even Magic Mike (2012). He does this with a homespun, almost improvisational flair, even shooting on iPhones. It’s as if the grand cinematic institutions are closed, but Soderbergh is still holding dedicated, playfully self-aware services at home.

In his latest film, Presence, Soderbergh applies this characteristic blend of solemnity and whimsy to the horror genre. The movie unfolds as a metaphysical mystery, a contemporary American gothic where an inviting suburban house transforms into a chilling site of haunting, confinement, and menace. The film opens with the house seemingly empty, devoid of furniture, as it's listed for sale. Real estate agent Cece (Julia Fox) arrives just before her clients: a well-to-do family—parents Rebecca (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan), and their teenagers, Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday). Cece hints at the house's quick sale due to its coveted school district, and Rebecca, a hard-driving businesswoman, swiftly seals the deal.

Soderbergh's Signature Gaze

However, Soderbergh, with his usual cunning, quickly and uncannily establishes the film's core premise: the house isn't actually empty, and the family will soon realize they are not alone. The director conjures the house's spectral presence through an unusual and consistently applied cinematic device: the camera embodies the perspective of that invisible character. From the very beginning, the house is introduced in a single shot that peers through windows, roves from room to room, and descends downstairs. The subsequent scene of the sale is presented in a gliding, gyrating take that again ranges widely through the house; as the negotiation takes place, the camera follows the daughter upstairs and into a bedroom, where she turns and looks at the camera as if acutely aware of being followed.

Soderbergh, who often serves as his own cinematographer under the pseudonym Peter Andrews, masterfully crafts this unique visual style to develop the identification of the camera’s gaze with that of the haunting spirit. A key rule for the film is that the camera never goes outside. All the movie’s depicted events either take place within the house’s walls or are visible through its windows or doors. This conspicuous oddness conveys a constant sense of surveillance: the spirit, though confined, pays close attention to both its surroundings and the goings-on within. Scenes unfold in extended, impulsively mobile shots, creating the impression of a ghost that is no mere passive observer but an alert and active mind. This conscious camera defies conventional commercial-movie practice, sometimes leaving characters behind as it prowls through the house, poking into rooms to satisfy its own curiosity, for reasons that only gradually reveal their dramatic significance.

Young Chloe soon emerges as the primary focus of the spirit’s attention and the center of the story. Her best friend, Nadia, recently died in a drug-related incident, as has another teen girl from the area, leaving Chloe’s family under a pall of grief. Her compassionate dad wants her to see a therapist, but Rebecca and Tyler (a competitive swimmer with an insolent streak) are impatient, even blaming her for burdening the family. Tyler even suggests, perhaps sarcastically, that Chloe might also be abusing drugs. As for the ghost, it’s not merely watching Chloe—who shares a connection to it that no other family member does—but actively watching over her, as if sensing she is in danger. Rebecca, too, faces her own troubles, involved in financial chicanery that her husband knows comes with legal risks. Inevitably, the film's dénouement, in elucidating the family story and revealing what links the siblings’ rivalry to their parents’ conflicts, also illuminates Chloe’s profound connection with the spirit world.

Themes, Twists, and Thematic Weight

Presence is a mystery, and a good one, meaning disclosing its revelations would spoil the experience. The film also rewards a second viewing, as details subtly sprinkled throughout take on new meaning in hindsight. This unapologetically plot-centered approach marks the movie as a throwback to a time when narrative coherence was paramount. While the mortal backstory and the threats to the family prove genuinely horrific, the mystery is as airtight as any classic studio-era entertainment. Soderbergh’s unusual method, particularly the subjective camerawork that embodies an increasingly active spirit, is not merely a gimmick; it is fundamental to the plot itself.

Working with a script by David Koepp, Soderbergh infuses his dramatic mechanism with substantial themes. The dynamic of family life witnessed by the ghost is immediately suspect, and eventually comes to echo wider corruption. Soderbergh is far from a frivolous filmmaker, and he realizes both his devilishly clever premise and its serious implications with a tight-lipped exuberance. A subtle detail underscores his thematic leanings: Chloe is seen reading a book by Alice Hughes, the name of the author played by Meryl Streep in Soderbergh’s 2020 comedic drama, Let Them All Talk. That film highlighted the tension between literary fiction and genre mysteries, the latter often disdained as "Styrofoam" by Alice. It's clear where Soderbergh’s allegiances lie.

Soderbergh fills Presence with idiosyncratic incidentals that are piquant on their own but ultimately reveal their place in his larger, free-floating puzzle. (For example, there's a intriguing riff involving a hundred-year-old silver nitrate mirror—a kind of surrogate for the near-magical properties of classic movies.) The story’s greater implications emerge incrementally, and while at times it might feel as if Soderbergh is imbuing his clever narrative gamesmanship with a prefabricated importance, the spectacular ending delivers a dose of philosophical heft and lends retrospective resonance to the movie’s unusual form.

With Presence, Soderbergh, a true believer in genre, embodies a genuine conviction in the mysticism upon which this particular genre relies. He cannot resist the ultimate temptation: the ghost, which at first moves through the house leaving no corporeal trace, eventually intervenes physically, drastically, and decisively in the life of the household. This gleeful cinematic inventiveness reverberates with sincere purpose and aligns with the story’s explicit embrace of another form of belief—organized religion, specifically Catholicism—and its confidence that higher powers are at work in human lives. It's hardly a coincidence that Soderbergh’s creative deployment of point-of-view shots echoes the work of Alfred Hitchcock, arguably the greatest genre filmmaker and also a director of profound Catholic inspiration. Hitchcock’s point-of-view shots evoked characters looking at the world with yearning and horror, guilt and responsibility, and these are precisely the emotional underpinnings of Soderbergh’s movie. Presence ultimately manifests the ultimate faith—belief in miracles—and sardonically suggests that nothing less will keep the vulnerable safe from the reach of human depravity.