Steven Soderbergh’s Presence stands as a daring and evocative entry in the director’s storied filmography, cementing his reputation as one of the most formally inventive filmmakers of our time. By framing the entire film through a spectral first-person (well, first-spirit) perspective, Soderbergh not only reinvents the haunted house genre, but also crafts a poignant meditation on loss, memory, and the unseen forces that shape our lives. The result is a film that’s both conceptually bold and emotionally resonant, embodying the duality that defines his best work.
The narrative of Presence revolves around a family moving into a new suburban home, with the teenage daughter, Chloe (played with remarkable sensitivity by Callina Liang), struggling to come to terms with the recent death of her best friend, Nadia. While her parents navigate the banalities of settling into a new life, Chloe becomes increasingly attuned to a presence within the house, and all of this is shown to the audience entirely from the ghost’s perspective. Soderbergh eschews the traditional trappings of horror, favoring a minimalist approach that uses silence, subtle visual cues, and long takes to evoke unease and contemplation rather than outright fear.
This formal decision to situate the entire film from the ghost’s point of view is quintessential Soderbergh—a bold formalist choice that elevates the material from genre to art. The roaming, fluid camera movements (operated by Soderbergh himself under the pseudonym Peter Andrews) evoke the disembodied yet omniscient presence of the ghost. The visual style creates a sense of both intimacy and detachment, allowing the audience to inhabit the spirit’s liminal state. Soderbergh not only challenges conventional narrative structures but also compels the viewer to engage with the film’s themes on a visceral level.
Thematically, Presence aligns itself with the cinematic lineage of deeply personal explorations of grief and memory. Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue comes to mind as a close companion piece, a devastating portrait of a woman grappling with the loss of her family that employs silence, visual abstraction, and a sparse narrative to reflect the isolating nature of grief. Similarly, Presence delves into Chloe’s fractured emotional state, using the ghost’s viewpoint as a vehicle to externalize her internal struggles. Like Kieslowski, Soderbergh allows silence and suggestion to do the heavy lifting, trusting the audience to piece together the film’s emotional truths.
Likewise, the dreamlike, poetic quality of Presence recalls Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror, a film that blurs the boundaries between memory, perception, and time. In Mirror, Tarkovsky crafts a fragmented narrative where the past and present intermingle, capturing the fluidity of memory and its impact on identity. Soderbergh achieves a similar effect in Presence by merging the ghost’s omniscient, timeless perspective with Chloe’s grounded yet fractured reality. The result is a film that, like Mirror, feels less like a linear story and more like an emotional reverie, where each moment resonates on both a narrative and symbolic level.
The technical craftsmanship of Presence is as striking as its narrative and conceptual ambitions. The cinematography, bathed in soft, muted tones, creates an atmosphere of quiet introspection, while the sound design subtly amplifies the tension without resorting to bombast. Soderbergh’s long takes, reminiscent of the visual strategies of Hitchcock or De Palma, heighten the sense of suspense while also allowing the emotional rhythms of the story to unfold organically. Yet despite these influences, Soderbergh’s vision is unmistakably his own—a seamless blend of formal experimentation and emotional intimacy that feels utterly contemporary. The ghost’s perspective becomes a metaphor for emotional isolation—an omnipresent yet powerless observer of a world that continues to move forward. This conceit allows Soderbergh to delve into the complexities of grief, memory, and connection, crafting a film that lingers long after its conclusion.
Soderbergh eschews the traditional trappings of horror, favoring a minimalist approach that uses silence, subtle visual cues, and long takes to evoke unease and contemplation rather than outright fear.
Soderbergh’s career has been defined by its restless curiosity and stylistic range, from the kaleidoscopic experimentation of Mosaic to the intimate realism of Bubble to the sci-fi introspection of Solaris, which was previously adapted by Tarkovsky. In Presence, he synthesizes these disparate sensibilities into something uniquely cohesive. The film is at once an experiment in narrative form and an emotionally grounded story, embodying his ability to navigate between formal rigor and narrative accessibility without compromising either. In discussing the film’s unique perspective, Soderbergh revealed that the inspiration stemmed from a personal experience involving a presence in his own home. He recounted an incident where a housesitter witnessed an apparition, which led him to ponder “what it would be like to be [a ghost], and be in this house, and feel like, ‘What are these people doing in my house—and is there anything that can be done?’”
Presence is more than just a ghost story—it’s a meditation on what it means to be seen, remembered, and ultimately forgotten. The film’s deliberate pace, emotional resonance, and formal daring demand engagement from its audience, rewarding those who are willing to reflect on its themes of grief and impermanence. Soderbergh demonstrates once again that his curiosity and creativity remain boundless, offering a cinematic experience that lingers long after the credits roll. It’s not merely a film to be watched, but one to be inhabited—a haunting, deeply felt reflection on the spaces we leave behind and the traces we carry forward.
