Unfortunately for the film, the frustration that the presence feels at its struggle to intervene in the events that unfold in the house plays out into the audience, so that we always feel at arm’s length from the drama. We are left feeling that a really good film is just out of reach.
It’s behind you!
Presence (Steven Soderbergh 2024)

- A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they’re not alone.
- Release date: 24 January 2025
- Director: Steven Soderbergh
- Distributed by: Neon
- Review by Jez Conolly
And, as it turns out, in front of you and following you about the house, in and out of rooms, up and down the stairs. Everywhere in fact, just not outside.
That is the central conceit of this spectral POV ghost story, and it’s a conceit that works successfully for the most part. That success owes much to the film’s efficient 84-minute run time; any longer and being entirely rooted to the interior of the house that provides the location for almost 100% of the story would start to initiate a little cabin fever.
As it is, the suburban property that we see the family of four move into in the opening scene is spacious and airy enough for both the living and the dead to inhabit. The presence of the film’s title is a poltergeist that is already moving around the interior of the house before the family meet the realtor who is going to sell it to them.
But who is, or was, the presence? We don’t have to wait too long for our first clue. As mother Rebekah (Lucy Liu), father Chris (Chris Sullivan) and son Tyler (Eddy Maday) are occupied with the routine processes of exploring the ground floor, withdrawn daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) has ascended the main staircase and headed to what will become her bedroom, perhaps drawn there by…something.
At the end of the long establishing scene, we see Chloe (as throughout from the presence’s perspective) turn her head, breaking the fourth wall to look towards the closet in the room and say ‘Nadia?’ We soon learn that Nadia, Chloe’s best friend, died unexpectedly in her sleep, and it’s this recent passing that explains Chloe’s closed off demeanour. So, we are led to assume that what we then see play out in a succession of scenes is Nadia’s ghost attaching itself to her friend with the intention of protecting Chloe from an upcoming event.
However, Presence is a film that seeks to sow the seed of an assumption. Without wishing to deliver a spoiler, as we pass through the film, we might want to think back to its beginning and ponder the question: how did Nadia’s ghost come to be in this house before the family had even begun to live in it?
There are one or two sub-plots that don’t particularly lead anywhere; we learn that Rebekah is likely doing something illegal in her day job, that husband Chris is aware of this, and that as a result the future of their marriage is in question. By the end of the film, it becomes apparent that these glimpses of domestic life are included to function as distractions. They stop us entertaining the possibility that the presence could be somebody other than Nadia.
When all of the family experience the poltergeist’s wrecking of brother Tyler’s bedroom, after he has been boasting to his mother about sharing a girl’s photograph on social media without her permission, the services of a ‘sensitive’ are sought. It is in the scene when the medium Lisa (Natalie Woolams-Torres) visits that we learn more about the nature of the presence, such spirits often don’t know who they are, why they are present or what time they are in. They could be from the past, the present…or the future. They’re figuring out just what it is they are manifesting for. They know they have a purpose but they don’t know what that purpose is.
An additional plot development is the introduction of Ryan (West Mulholland), Tyler’s new friend who visits the house and soon begins a relationship with Chloe. Ryan’s motivations seem suspect from the get-go, and a large part of the film’s resolution is tied up with Ryan’s involvement in Nadia’s death. On the scale of satisfaction, it is the denouement that loses Presence some points.
This is a film that is all about glimpsing and figuring out, so to be provided with some concrete explanations at the end feels a little disappointing. A dash more ambiguity would not have gone amiss. Having said that, the final moments of the film provide enough information to invite you back and reconsider what you thought was going on for the previous hour and a half, which is always a satisfying flip for a film to perform.
Presence will disappoint some who were led to expect a more full-blooded horror experience from the trailer. This is a supernatural drama, so much more about familial intimacy than jump scares. So don’t go in expecting a Blumhouse fright fest. I wouldn’t place it in the bracket of A24 arthouse horror either.
It’s too warm and straightforward for that. Indeed, at times it is really quite moving; there’s a scene around twenty minutes in when the presence tidies up Chloe’s bedroom, and weirdly it gave me a lump in my throat, because here we have a ghost who, despite its sadness, wants to be kind. Unfortunately for the film, the frustration that the presence feels at its struggle to intervene in the events that unfold in the house plays out into the audience, so that we always feel at arm’s length from the drama. We are left feeling that a really good film is just out of reach.
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