‘Presence’ film overview: Steven Soderbergh’s ingenious but inconsistent horror-drama

A nonetheless from ‘Presence’

A spectre is haunting the Payne household — the spectre of Steven Soderbergh’s hand-held digital camera. At the very least, that’s what we’re led to imagine as we’re launched to Chris (Chris Sullivan), Rebecca (Lucy Liu), and their teenaged youngsters, Tyler (Eddy Maday), and Chloe (Callina Liang).

Rebecca’s goals and needs for her son Tyler push the household to relocate to a brand new neighbourhood that guarantees entry to a greater college. In a quest to show her son right into a well-decorated swimmer, she plots, schemes, and presumably commits white-collar crimes. Chloe and Chris, in the meantime, play second fiddle, and although cautious of her actions, are overwhelmed by the uneasy relationships of their lives. Amidst grieving her pals who handed away below mysterious circumstances, Chloe finds herself notably on edge within the new home.

Soderbergh’s ingenuity lies in unravelling the familial bonds via lengthy, first-person point-of-view takes of a ghost or a phantom that lurks in the home. As he sustains these single photographs via the movie, the viewers may really feel compelled to contain themselves within the narrative. We’re given area to interrogate our beliefs, concepts, and preconceived notions as he persists along with his storyline. His cinematography feels designed to convey to the fore the dysfunction and stress simmering within the Payne household.

A nonetheless from ‘Presence’

Someday, Tyler befriends Ryan Caldwell (West Mulholland), a pupil at his college who boasts vital social clout. Because the duo hang around collectively of their home, Ryan is taken by Chloe’s presence, and he sneaks round to spend time together with her, including to the stressors the household is already battling. The strain by no means reaches a crescendo and infrequently leaks out inadvertently with seemingly unexplainable and illogical situations of absurd supernatural accidents, which embody the spirit organising Chloe’s mattress and bookshelf. The digital camera that doesn’t enterprise outdoors the home via many of the runtime, whereas making it claustrophobic, provides delicate stress to the home, adorned with picket interiors, begging to be set ablaze. With absent leap scares and subverted horror stereotypes (for probably the most half), the movie makes an attempt to fabricate chills that slowly creep up on you however principally fails.

Lucy Liu is sensible as a boy mother who evokes annoyance, and Chris Sullivan coasts via as a lady dad who’s treading rigorously round his obsessive spouse, making an attempt to deal with their daughter’s wants. Flatly written strains that sound nonchalant on the floor add brevity to their dynamic, a lot in order that within the absence of the chills, the movie nearly morphs right into a sociological research of an interracial middle-class household chasing the parable of the American dream.

Whereas Soderbergh is inconsistent in his try at manufacturing a story of silent familial dysfunction and distress, Presence as a mission nonetheless holds worth. It’s thrilling to look at the 62-year-old Academy Award-winning director persevering with to problem the norms of typical filmmaking, upholding his proclamation about how filmmakers are all the time at first of infinity.

Presence is at the moment working in theatres.