Presence (2024)

I initially planned to write this post a couple of days ago (Saturday May 24th) to pass the time while I was on-call at the office. Instead, I just played some video games (mainly FTL: Faster Than Light) until I racked up enough hours to leave. This past week was actually pretty chill as far as on-call weeks are concerned. I wasn’t swamped at work during the day, even on Friday when my fellow RT took a day off. In addition, the only calls I did get were the kind of issues I was able to resolve over the phone, so I didn’t have to drive out. My friend’s family threw an early birthday party on Saturday and I was able to make it and have a good time without any pesky calls getting in the way. Yesterday I was able to chill at home and got to pocket four hours of overtime for a couple of ten minute calls. Today being Memorial Day, I was given the holiday off and was no longer on call, so I went out with friends to see Friendship (2024), but I’ll go into more detail on that in a separate post.

Last Monday (5/19/25), the evening before I went on-call for the week, I sat down and watched Presence (2024). If you’ve read my previous posts, you may recall that I mentioned watching the trailer when I went to see Wolfman (2025). In that post, I mentioned that I usually don’t find supernatural ghost movies to be that interesting, but the cinematography displayed in the trailer was enough to make me want to watch. Unfortunately, I missed seeing it in theaters as there were other things I wanted to watch at the time and it seemed like Presence was only in theaters near me for a couple of weeks. However, if you recall my last post, I was able to find the 4K blu-ray for the movie at Rhino Records in Montclair, CA. Interestingly enough, they had the movie on the shelf at least since May 18th, a couple of days before its official home video release on May 20th. I guess that’s how you know the store is GOATed. 

I watched the movie at home on my Panasonic UB840 4K player and LG C2 OLED TV with a 5.1 surround sound setup. It was in the late evening and the sun was beginning to go down; I had the blinds shut and the lights off as I wanted to set the vibe. There was a cool breeze outside and I wanted to keep the windows open, but the neighbors behind my house were having a rowdy pool party. They were playing music, which I typically have no problem tuning out, but what got me to close the window was that I kept hearing people in the pool yelling and screaming. If I was watching an action movie I’d tolerate it, but I correctly assumed that Presence was gonna be more of a slower film with quieter scenes and dialogue you ought to pay attention to. As such, I shut the windows, which is a shame as I felt the cool breeze subtly flowing in could have added to the vibe. I felt that the transfer on the 4K blu-ray was great all-around. The movie is presented in native 4K in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The sound was also done well with good surround panning, clear dialogue, and immersive background noise in the rear speakers. I went with the 5.1 DTS-HD track, but the disc also has a Dolby Atmos track if your system supports it; both tracks are in English. With subtitles your only options are Spanish and English SDH (subtitles for the deaf or hard of hearing). As someone that does like to turn on subbies from time to time, it’s a pet peeve of mine for a movie to only include SDH subtitles for English. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why SDH subtitles are necessary to have on the disc, but it can be a little annoying for people that casually use subtitles to “hear the movie better”. This is especially true when watching horror movies with SDH subbies as you can often get spoiled by them with examples like “(approaching footsteps)”, “(loud crash)”, etc. I only rant about this because I feel that adding in non-SDH English subtitles, alongside the SDH version, shouldn’t be that much more work. I may be out of practice so let me know if I’m off base, but I feel like you can make a copy of the SDH subtitle track and just delete the descriptive parts. Anyhow, I’ll move onto the movie proper.

 Presence is a supernatural drama directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp. You may recognize this duo as the same collaborative team on Black Bag (2025), which I have also written about. Steven Soderbergh’s work also includes No Sudden Move (2021), which I hear is good and Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), which I know is good. David Koepp also seems to be profilic on the writing side, having credits in big blockbusters like Jurassic Park (1993), Spider-Man (2002), and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). The film centers around a troubled, near splintered family that has recently moved into a new home, only to slowly realize they are being observed by an unseen spirit. 

In terms of what works for me in this film, I’ll start with the element that drew me in from the trailer: the cinematography. This movie is entirely shot in one location from a first-person perspective, specifically that of the titular “Presence” that roams the house and observes the family inside. With that in mind, there are many long-takes present in this film, shot at about eye level of the spirit. These aren’t static shots either as the camera often moves like a person between multiple areas of the house. The cinematography is also aided by the lighting and color-grading. In my quick search for production information on this film, I could not verify if the movie completely relied on natural and diegetic lighting, but it seemed like it did with morning and afternoon light coming in from windows and darker areas of the house being lit with chandeliers or ceiling lights. Night scenes appear quite dark, sometimes to the point where you can see the digital noise from the Sony A7 Mirrorless Camera Soderbergh was using. In regards to the color-grade, nothing appears to be overly cool or warm to convey certain moods or emotions; every touch up comes off as how it would appear before the naked eye, which helps the audience really buy into seeing everything from the perspective of the spirit. Honestly the shot direction and overall look of this movie gives off the feel of a short indie proof-of-concept expanded into a feature film. I wish the blu-ray came with a director’s commentary because I still have questions about this movie’s production. There is an LA Times interview with Steven Soderbergh that goes a little bit into the production of this movie. I’ll go ahead and link it for those curious.   

Without getting into spoilers, I’ll say that the movie’s premise lures you into thinking this is going to be a scary horror film. However, as the film progresses, you learn that the purpose of the supernatural aspect is for a different kind of story. This to say that the movie, even with its stellar cinematography, falls apart if the writing and performances aren’t engaging enough.  Thankfully this isn’t the case as most of the film’s cast, particularly the aforementioned family, give great and grounded performances. You can really feel how strained and tense relationships in this family are through scenes between wife Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and husband Chris (Chris Sullivan), in addition to how bonds and favoritism come into play between these characters and their children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). Heated arguments come off realistic and sincere, perhaps hitting too close to home for some viewers at points. Something about this film I really enjoy is how, through the spirit’s perspective, we often see short scenes or vignettes of different family members interacting with each other or having conversations. People coming into this expecting a horror film may look at these vignettes as filler dialogue, but I feel it’s crucial to get a sense of these characters as people and slowly put the pieces together on how and why this family is emotionally strained. The only weak link in the cast for me comes from the antagonist. Without getting into spoilers, I personally felt they came off as borderline comically evil. Indeed the antagonist’s actions in the film are despicable and disturbing, unfortunately I just feel that it’s undercut with the dialogue they were given and how they delivered it. 

With that said, I’m gonna give Presence a BEST MOVIE EVER. If you have not seen it yet, I strongly encourage you to give it a watch. It’s short but sweet at just under an hour and a half and well paced. Seeing this film really makes me want to give Soderbergh’s follow-up, Black Bag, a second viewing. That movie is also out on home video now, so I may just pick up the blu-ray. My next post will be on Friendship (2024). Have a good night!