Presence

Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Presence follows a family, including Lucy Liu’s Rebekah and Chris Sullivan’s Chris, as they move into a haunted house and must subsequently figure out what the entity wants. Filmmaker Soderbergh, armed with David Koepp’s screenplay, delivers an inventive spin on a familiar story by framing the proceedings from the aforementioned entity’s perspective, with this bold stylistic choice paving the way for a deliberately-paced narrative that takes its time in developing the human characters and their individual exploits. It’s clear, then, that Presence benefits substantially from Peter Andrews’ often spellbinding cinematography and an underlying mystery that grows more and more compelling as time progresses, although, in terms of the latter, it’s clear that the almost incongruously larger-than-life resolution to said mystery is rather (and disappointingly) lackluster (ie it’s just silly, ultimately). Still, Presence‘s unique sensibilities, coupled with an admittedly strong closing stretch, cement its place as a decidedly singular entry within a crowded (and largely ineffective) horror-movie genre.

*** out of ****