Movie Review: Presence

The new movie "Presence" plays like a combination of Poltergeist (1982) and any one of the seven Paranormal Activity movies released from (2009-2021). The most interesting fact about this movie is the very unusual way the director Steven Soderbergh shows scene transition, with the end of the scene, a few seconds of black screen, and then immediately into the next scene. This is a technique I have never seen before, and gives a very unusual look and feel to this movie.

This story follows the same basic idea as Poltergeist. When there is a person who passes away under corrupt circumstances, the person's spirit is not able to ascend to where it would normally go and instead haunts houses, to either prevent another wrong or right the wrong that happened to them when they died.

Presence stars Lucy Liu as Rebekah in one of her few starring roles in recent years and Chris Sullivan as Chris, who was one of the main stars of the great television series, "This is Us", which ran from (2016-2022). Liu and Sullivan seem very unlikely as a married couple, something even mentioned during this film. They have two children, both of them in their late teens within a very dysfunctional family with a large number of arguments and foul language, especially from the teenage son Tyler played by Eddy Maday. The daughter Chloe played by Callina Liang is in constant conflict with her brother with arguments that constantly escalate and the underlying cause is that Rebekah favors Tyler over Chloe.

Throughout this film, there are several scenes that include the presence of a ghost, that eventually forces the family to hire a professional medium - much like the plot of Poltergeist.

The dramatic ending is both mostly unexpected and well done, with a final ending scene that was impressively acted by Lucy Liu.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a high 87% and I mostly agree with this rating, due to the different director techniques introduced by Solerberg and the acting.