Presence offers a family drama from a voyeuristic, supernatural perspective. It can be too slow and it doesn't completely trust the audience to understand everything, which is almost entirely counterbalanced by the film's big twist allowing the supernatural premise and the everyday drama at the centre to come together at the exact same moment whilst also making everything beforehand work more.
The core family of four spits in two since Callina Liang & Chris Sullivan are a lot more empathetic whereas Lucy Liu & Eddy Maday are deliberately more self-obsessed to an almost irredeemable extent. The best dramatic moments come from Chris Sullivan trying to do his best whilst becoming increasingly defeated and it's definitely appreciated seeing the whole family accept the presence of a presence fairly quickly.
Simply by being able to shoot this on a low budget of $2 million in an incredibly short span of 11 days, Steven Soderbergh's direction impresses. This is essentially a collection of long takes and he makes the wise decision to cut to black between them opposed to trying to join them all together. It proves that Soderbergh only continues to experiment in exciting and ambitious ways.
David Koepp's screenplay can be clunky and cringey, especially when it comes to the teenagers; however, it all coalesces at the very end in a way that can excuse some of it. Soderbergh's own cinematography prevents the central conceit from feeling like a gimmick by bringing an ethereal nature because of the unnatural way it's always moving around the house. It really succeeds in feeling like another character.
The core family of four spits in two since Callina Liang & Chris Sullivan are a lot more empathetic whereas Lucy Liu & Eddy Maday are deliberately more self-obsessed to an almost irredeemable extent. The best dramatic moments come from Chris Sullivan trying to do his best whilst becoming increasingly defeated and it's definitely appreciated seeing the whole family accept the presence of a presence fairly quickly.
Simply by being able to shoot this on a low budget of $2 million in an incredibly short span of 11 days, Steven Soderbergh's direction impresses. This is essentially a collection of long takes and he makes the wise decision to cut to black between them opposed to trying to join them all together. It proves that Soderbergh only continues to experiment in exciting and ambitious ways.
David Koepp's screenplay can be clunky and cringey, especially when it comes to the teenagers; however, it all coalesces at the very end in a way that can excuse some of it. Soderbergh's own cinematography prevents the central conceit from feeling like a gimmick by bringing an ethereal nature because of the unnatural way it's always moving around the house. It really succeeds in feeling like another character.