PRESENCE

**

Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Starring Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan.

Horror, US, 85 minutes, Certificate 15.

Released in cinemas in the UK on Friday 24th January by Warner Bros and Picture House

After flirting with horror with 2018’s UNSANE, director Steven Soderbergh goes full on supernatural with PRESENCE, a ghost story that attempts to tackle the genre from a different perspective by telling its story entirely from the ghosts point of view. This unseen spirit glides from room to room, getting up close and personal with the family that has just moved into the house which the spirit inhabits. Usually lurking within the closet of introverted teenage daughter Chloe, the audience begins to learn through clipped, mundane scenes of suburban family life filling in backstory of not only the family themselves but of a possible connection to the spirit itself as it hovers around them arousing their suspicions as to whether they are on their own or not.

Where this all leads to is told in an engaging enough fashion. Each scene playing out in long, uninterrupted takes as the camera adopts the POV of the spirit, sometimes hovering right in front of the actors to disconcerting effect. It is a clever conceit, smartly written and constructed by Soderbergh’s regular collaborator, David Koepp, a screenwriter whose genre credentials include his underrated directorial effort STIR OF ECHOES, which itself has more than a few things in common with this piece. As smart as it is though, PRESENCE fails to leave much of an impression, especially with an audience who may be unprepared to engage with the film’s unique presentation.

Chloe, played by Callina Liang, makes for an identifiable protagonist if not an entirely interesting one. As a director, Soderbergh has sometimes displayed a disconnect with his characters; keeping them at a real distance from fully connecting with the audience. In a film such as his remake of SOLARIS, this can work well, serving the narrative. In this tale of the supernatural it comes across as a flaw. This is a horror film where it feels hard to connect with, or even care about any of these characters. Although skilfully played, Lucy Liu’s character of Rebekah, a mother and businesswoman who has got herself into a sticky situation with her work, her story is only fleetingly hinted at, leaving her as little more than a character who is disconnected from her family. Despite the concerns of her husband Chris, played by Chris Sullivan, whose conflicted feelings threaten to add a smidgen of drama to proceedings, the sense of disconnection echoes through the film as a whole.

This strained family unit is completed by Tyler, played by Eddy Maday. His athletic jock character constantly at odds with his more receptive sister provides the film with a spark of contention that eventually fits in neatly with the supernatural hook. The film flickers out with a smart revelation, with a visual trick that you can see coming from a mile away. Despite the smart camera work there is very little here to raise the pulse. Lacking in tension and atmosphere the film's title comes across as ironic in all the wrong ways. With the majority of the characters failing to acknowledge the spectre at the centre of it all, PRESENCE itself struggles to make much of an impression with any viewer who encounters it.

Iain MacLeod