Steven Soderbergh famously talked about the three-shot rule in a 2017 interview with Amy Taubin. "After the first three shots, I know whether this person knows what they’re doing or they don't", he explained. I was reminded of this as I watched the opening scenes of Soderbergh's latest film, Presence; this film is masterful.
Presence kicks off in an eerily vacant house. The camera moves through its empty rooms, gliding from floor to floor, lingering at windows just long enough to hint at what’s going on outside. It took me a minute to catch on, but by the second scene, it hit me: these shots are long. Really long. Characters drift in and out of view, and conversations are captured almost by accident, like the camera’s just there, quietly eavesdropping.
An estate agent arrives, followed by a family of four who buy the house. Slowly, it transforms from a barren shell to a cozy, lived-in space. Everything seems perfectly normal... except for Chloe (Callina Liang, Tell Me Everything), the teenage daughter. She keeps staring directly into the camera, wide-eyed and visibly unsettled. There’s also a painter who refuses to step foot in one of the rooms.
A creeping unease settles in as it becomes unmistakably clear: the camera is no mere observer. It’s a silent participant, a character in the film with its own fears, its own motives. And as the story unfolds, you can’t help but feel that its gaze is anything but neutral - its intentions are rooted in a darker and more disturbing truth.
Presence taps into fear on multiple levels. It’s got the familiar ghost-story thrills - jumps, creaks, that creeping tension - but it’s also something deeper, the insidious sense of the true potential for evil that resides in ordinary human beings.
The cast is small, with a core cast of just five people, but it’s a powerhouse ensemble. Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan, as Rebecca and Chris Payne, bring a perfect contrast. Their characters are polar opposites: different personalities, opposite moral compasses, wildly conflicting parenting styles. It’s a subtle but brilliant dynamic that anchors the tension in the film.
Callina Liang owns the screen as Chloe, and it’s impossible to look away. The young actress commands every moment, effortlessly blending a haunting sense of innocence with the heavy weight of grief. It’s clear from the start that Chloe figures everything out long before anyone else does, and Liang nails that subtle shift perfectly. She doesn’t need to say much, her facial expressions say it all, capturing that eerie awareness that they are not alone in the house.
For a while, I thought I had the mystery figured out, but there was something oddly satisfying about getting it wrong. I was close but Soderbergh succeeded in concealing his final hand.
As the credits rolled, I realised one final thing, and I was totally fine with it. Fine with all the unanswered questions, the plotlines left to wither. I wouldn't call them 'red herrings', but there were many threads left up to the audience to answer on their own. It was a subtle message that much of what happens inside our homes is noise, that we need to focus on what truly matters, because life’s way too short to add more to our burden.
With impeccable direction (and some clever misdirection), stunning camerawork, strong performances, and enough scares to keep you on edge, Presence has it all. Consider this my enthusiastic five-star rating, along with a full mea culpa, because I genuinely didn’t think Steven Soderbergh had it in him to nail a ghostly horror film with this much finesse. I was wrong, and I’m here for it.★★★★★
