Say what you will about Steven Soderbergh—you’ve got to give the man credit for always trying something new. In the last few years alone he’s made Magic Mike’s Last Dance, the cyberthriller Kimi, and two TV miniseries. And now he’s returning to theaters with the haunting Presence, in which the camera takes the POV of a … honestly, I think the title is pretty clear.
If you are a person who struggles with the camera style of first-person shooter style videogames, this will not be the movie for you. (The trailer alone made me a little queasy.) The camera is the presence, and it moves through the home of a grieving family accordingly. It’s a clever, intimate idea; Soderbergh told Variety, “Everything is revealed through the glimpses of this family that this presence sees. And the whole ghost genre element is a Trojan horse to show a group of people in danger of falling apart.”
The movie stars Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, Julia Fox, and a cozy-looking house that is never very well-lit. It’s written by David Koepp, who also wrote Soderbergh’s Kimi (Koepp also co-wrote Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the utterly forgettable Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit).
Meet the Presence in theaters on January 24th, 2025.
