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Presence Movie Review

Presence is a 2025 supernatural thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan and Callina Liang. This is such an intriguing, original experiment.

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“My boy… he came back to save you“

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A family becomes convinced they are not alone after moving into their new home in the suburbs. Steven Soderbergh is in his sixties and the fact that he is constantly experimenting with different formats and approaches to storytelling speaks volumes of his talents as a filmmaker and his willingness to try something new. The result is one of the most original thrillers in quite some time.

The film is shot in first person and through the POV of a ghost. You’d think that this is something that somebody would have done many times before, but the reality is that Soderbergh is the first director to think of this idea and he executed it deftly as well. The film resembled a video game for sure, but the story and characters are pretty strong in their own right, elevating the movie above its technical constraints.

There is also the idea of a ghost not haunting this house, but actually helping its residents. The benevolent ghost concept was a terrific idea that actually made more sense in the context of the story. This made the movie not scary at all, but this is a thriller instead of a horror movie above all else, so it worked as such. The cinematography is excellent and I also loved the editing – only around thirty cuts were used. The movie flows well in spite of its slow pace and it actually tried to develop its characters, which is rare for a film like this.

This family of four is well realized and their dynamic quite realistic. The mother and son I found to be insufferable and angry all the time while the daughter and father had a wonderful relationship – she had a pretty tragic arc while he was a great soul. The acting performances are pretty good here, but Lucy Liu deserved a bigger role.

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Presence has a very interesting, powerful ending that will many viewers puzzled, but it left me quite satisfied. My reading of the ending is that the ghost was the sister’s dead friend all along and the ending sees the brother become a ghost himself while the girl is finally free and she floats to the sky. The villain of the movie was a bit too over-the-top and unrealistic, but he was quite scary nonetheless. How everything wrapped was very satisfactory to me personally. I just wished that the entire movie was more thrilling and a bit brisker in pace.