Presence

Both can move through any space unseen or unacknowledged, observing others without being observed themselves, unconstrained by the laws of physics. Presence makes the most of that link with an idea brilliant in its simplicity: a ghost story from the perspective of the ghost. And yet it isn’t a horror movie, making little attempt to scare or even unnerve the audience. Soderbergh — who, per custom, shot and edited the film himself under a pseudonym— has conjured a different kind of haunting.

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He and screenwriter David Koepp commit fully to their premise. The camera itself is the protagonist and the humans are mere subjects for it to look upon, not that they’re two-dimensional. That’s especially true of teenage Chloe (Callina Liang), whose friend recently died of an accidental overdose and who first senses the spectral presence shortly after she and her family move into their new house.

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The more you learn about their dynamic, the sadder it becomes. Rebekah (Lucy Liu) is a type-A boy mom to a son (Eddy Maday) who, for most of the running time, comes across as little more than an entitled bully; their relationship runs parallel to that between father (Chris Sullivan) and daughter, whose bond is much warmer. “She can’t take us all down with her,” Rebekah says of her daughter’s struggles shortly after explaining to her son that everything she does is for him, lest you wonder who the favorite is.

And then there’s the actual specter, whose identity is hinted at but never confirmed. It moves objects around without touching them, floats between rooms, and, in a few crucial scenes, intervenes to protect Chloe from something far worse than a fellow ghost. Presence dispels the notion that its title character is malevolent almost immediately, as the real antagonist is all too human. The evil here is banal, not supernatural, which might be why Chloe understands it in a way her brother and parents can’t. Having suffered a terrible loss at too young an age, she knows what’s worthy of her fear and what isn’t.

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Presence likens the divide between this world and the next to a door that, for most of us, remains closed at all times. It might open slightly when we dream or “experience god,” as one spiritually inclined character puts it, and for a select few it’s always open — a mixed blessing that exacts a toll on whoever possesses it. One of these gifted intermediaries visits the house and is immediately drawn to the living room mirror. “Old mirrors are so much better than new ones," she says. "They’re like old people: they’ve seen more.” What initially seems like a throwaway line takes on revelatory importance by the time the credits roll.

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Each scene leading up to those credits is presented as one long take bookended by a brief fade to black. The pauses, slightly longer than a blink, afford enough time to reflect on the preceding moments and whether something sinister might have been at play but never enough time to figure out exactly what it might be. Many sequences begin in the middle of a conversation, as though both we and the ghost are intruding on something we aren’t meant to see. It’s a bravura display from Soderbergh in terms of both narrative and technique, which slowly fuse together as if bound by ectoplasm.

The evil here is banal, not supernatural.

Like a handful of Soderberg’s movies, Presence can at times feel more like an exercise than a labor of love — you might get the sense, in a few early scenes, that he made it mostly to see whether he could and not because he was truly passionate about the material. Were he a less gifted filmmaker, that would be a bigger issue. The highly prolific multihyphenate has directed more than 30 features since making his breakthrough with 1989’s sex, lies, and videotape, a cinematic chameleon who effortlessly vacillates from one mode of filmmaking to another. He’s as comfortable with crowdpleasers like the Ocean’s trilogy, Erin Brokovich, and Magic Mike as he is with low-key oddities like Schizolopolis and his severely underrated Solaris remake.

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Above all else his movies are sleek, sometimes in a way that makes them appear slight — but, as in his other sneakily effective work, there’s more to Presence than initially meets the eye. At a brisk 85 minutes, this is the rare movie that could have been half an hour longer; it almost feels like it ends just as it’s getting started. But there’s something to be said for leaving the audience wanting more, especially in a way that befits the material. Not all spirits linger, and neither do all good movies.