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Presence is one thing that most films struggle to be, these days: short.
In a series of one-take scenes – some short, some of a reasonable length – the first family who come to look at a house just before it goes on the market, is led by Rebekah (Lucy Liu – Red One), who immediately takes to it, although we get an indication that something’s going on, as one of the contracted painters has refused to go into a particular room – which will become her daughter, Chloe’s (Callina Liang), bedroom – but it feels like the steadicam camera roaming the house is the presence, itself, but who or what is it?
For Chloe, she senses Nadia, a friend of her’s who has passed away, but is she right? Either way, it has very poltergeist-like behaviour, even tidying up at times, making me wish it would come round my house!
In a film which takes a while before even the music score kicks in, Presence is mostly very low-key in its approach, just following the family’s life as they settle in, including Chloe’s new boyfriend, Ryan (West Mulholland), acting rather on the weird side, who’s also the best friend of her brother, Tyler (Eddy Maday), and can psychic Lisa (Natalie Woolams-Torres – Dead Ringers (2023)) get to the bottom of this, and make this house “clean”?
However, there is a moment when Dad Chris (Chris Sullivan – Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2) is on the phone, privately talking about doing not-so-legal stuff to his lawyer, but that seems to be a plotline that drops off and is never picked up.
On a separate note, I saw the kitchen/diner has an extra set of stairs, but we never saw where that went, given the main central staircase is only next door, so the kitchen ones would go up into the middle of someone’s bedroom!
And it’s things like that which made me think that despite the low budget – a mere $2m for this movie – I was always spotting CGI taking place will have been because although some rooms of the house show the world outside the window, a lot of this will take place on a film set, so CGI will be used to segue between the two.
Additionally, I noticed that the out-of-focus (from our point of view, as it was in the background) kitchen TV shows an American football in a 4:3 image, but is stretched to 16:9 (I hope people who do that don’t drive!) and my OCD kicks in when visitors to the house don’t take their outside shoes off, and even Chris is still wearing his when walking into the bedroom!
However, overall, Presence is one of those mild horror films where I wasn’t expecting too much from it, since these are ten-a-penny, lately, but if you let yourself go with it, it’s surprisingly effective, especially the way the camera is allowed to linger on a scene, rather than fast-cutting all over the shop, like some Hollywood movies do.
There are no mid- or post-credits scenes.
Presence is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 85 minutes
Release date: January 24th 2025
Studio: NEON
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Rating: 7.5/10
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Producers: Julie M Anderson, Ken Meyer
Screenplay: David Koepp
Music: Zack Ryan
Cast:
Rebekah: Lucy Liu
Chris: Chris Sullivan
Chloe: Callina Liang
Tyler: Eddy Maday
Ryan: West Mulholland
Cece: Julia Fox
Contractor: Benny Elledge
Painter #1: Daniel Danielson
Painter #2: Jared Wiseman
Painter #3: Robert M Jiménez
Carl: Lucas Papaelias
Lisa: Natalie Woolams-Torres
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.