By Bob Grimm
Dang, it’s got to be difficult to make a good ghost movie. There have been so damn many; how do you find a unique take on such a played-out genre?
Director Steven Soderbergh comes close with Presence. He has a fine ensemble cast, and an almost interesting gimmick in basically making the viewer the ghost, watching all the action POV-style.
Sadly, this is a case of style over substance. The POV gimmick is ultimately limiting, and the mystery that writer David Koepp constructs isn’t all that mysterious. By the time the film wraps, the parts that are supposed to stun or even scare us just sort of float by without any real sting. The presentation, despite the best efforts of a game cast, is flat. And for a ghost story, it’s just not scary.
Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan do some strong work as parents moving their family into a new home after their daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang), has experienced some trauma with the loss of a friend. Brother Tyler (Eddy Maday), a typical high school kid trying to make it in sports, brings over a classmate (West Mulholland); these are the main pieces of the small cast.
Soderbergh and Koepp try to fake out the audience with a couple of subplots that don’t really get resolved. The floating-ghost camera is amusing for about five minutes, but grows tedious. The story leads up to a sudden ending that is more laughable than shocking.
Oddly, it’s the family drama, not the ghost stuff, that almost makes this film interesting. I actually cared more for the dysfunctional family—and whatever was hurting the marriage and parental bonds—than anything to do with the ghost. Sullivan and Liu have some real fire in their scenes together, but they are reduced to almost supporting roles in favor of a ghost leering at the kids from the closets.
I just have to throw this in: This is yet another movie in which people clearly discover that there is a ghost in the house. After a brief “we’ve got to get the hell out of here” conversation, the movie just carries on, with them residing in a home while a ghost is knocking shit off shelves and probably watching them in the shower. Nope. That just doesn’t make any sense.
Presence is now streaming via various sources.
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