More often than not, Steven Soderbergh's career is spoken of as this kind of Soderbergh movie or that kind of Soderbergh movie. His filmography is made up of distinct groupings of types of movies the filmmaker likes to create, and his latest, Presence, is firmly in the "this" camp.
Presence is a haunted house story told from the view point of the ghost who inhabits the gorgeous home. The opening moments of the film bring us around the different rooms and floors of the house, which serves as a clever double-edged style choice from Soderbergh, where we get the lay of the land and we're also introduced to (and given a few minutes to become adjusted to) the idea of the camera lens being the ghost itself.
When the Payne family moves in, Chloe (Callina Liang) seems to sense something a bit off about her new home but ignores it, chalking it up to the grief associated with losing a friend to overdose. Meanwhile, Chloe's brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) adapts to his new surroundings easily as the popular kid in school excelling on the swim team. Their mother, Rebecca (Lucy Liu), shows a clear favouritism towards Tyler, uprooting the family to serve her son's athletic potential and doing everything in her power to make him an accomplished young man. The only person in Chloe's corner is her father, Chris (an excellent and standout Chris Sullivan), who has to remind his wife they have two children.
Across the family drama, Soderbergh (with a script by David Koepp, a long-time friend of the director's and past collaborator on Kimi) weaves a tense thriller involving young women being preyed upon, where Chloe is the next victim. It's this genre fake-out that delivers Presence its most interesting thread: the film feels and looks like a horror movie, but in fact, it's a family drama and thriller seen through the literal lens of horror.
One hand washes the other in Presence, where Soderbergh's creativity and the talented ensemble come together to form a film high in tension and full of emotion. Presence certainly deserves your presence in the theatre.
The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5–15. Get information about tickets and screening at TIFF's website.