My quick rating – 5.9/10. Steven Soderbergh’s Presence is less a traditional haunted house movie and more of an artful experiment in perspective. Marketed—perhaps misleadingly—as a horror film, this 85-minute suburban ghost story leans more into quiet unease and emotional tension than jump scares or gory thrills. The real hook here is the concept: the filmmakers shot the entire movie from the ghost’s point of view. And in that regard, Soderbergh delivers something fresh, even if the execution doesn’t always live up to the premise’s potential.
Lucy Liu grabs the human spotlight as she plays the family mother who has just moved into what they soon discover is a not-so-empty house. She’s great here, relatable and emotionally honest in a role that asks her to anchor scenes with little conventional back-and-forth. But ultimately, the ghost is the real star, and Soderbergh’s camera puts us directly behind its silent, spectral eyes.
It’s a neat trick. The filmmakers use a floating, voyeuristic perspective to make you feel like you’re eavesdropping on lives never meant to be watched. It’s immersive in a way most ghost stories only aspire to be. But where it falters is in the story itself. There’s just not enough meat on the bones to justify a full feature. Once the novelty of the gimmick wears off—and it does wear off—you’re left hoping for deeper character arcs, tighter tension, or at least a few shocking revelations.
And while there are thematic undercurrents at play here, ones that do eventually bubble to the surface, they arrive too softly to hit with any real impact. The film has something to say, sure, but if you pick up on it in the first act, the rest of the journey starts to feel like slow-motion confirmation rather than discovery.
Then there are moments of head-scratching logic that yank you right out of the atmosphere. One particularly dumbfounding choice comes when the parents, after witnessing a full-on supernatural meltdown in a bedroom, decide to leave the kids home alone. Come again? Not only have they verified that the house is haunted—no ambiguity, no “maybe it was the wind” excuses—they still treat it like a mild inconvenience. No panic. No immediate exit. Just a baffling lack of urgency that undercuts the credibility of the entire family dynamic.
That said, this isn’t a bad movie. Far from it. It’s stylish, well-acted, and genuinely interesting to look at. The filmmakers created what feels like a really impressive short film and then padded it out into a feature without adding enough substance to fill the frame.. It’s not scary, not shocking, and not particularly twisty, but it is a unique take on a genre that’s too often stuck in repetition.
Bottom line: Presence is worth watching for the concept alone, especially if you’re in the mood for something different. Just temper your expectations. This is a quiet experiment, not a scream-fest—and if you go in looking for blood-curdling horror, you’re going to come out haunted by missed potential instead.
Amazon along with several other streamers are carrying this one.