Presence is a movie I knew next to nothing about when I started watching it. However, it does a lot in a short amount of time to set your expectations. It has a specific style that works both to its benefit and detriment in certain ways. Nonetheless, it makes for a somewhat unique and surprising experience with its relatively simple premise.

Pros

Somewhat unique style to its storytelling, with how the film is shot and edited
Many long takes that require a lot from the actors, who do a decent job
Some good lines of dialogue exchanged between certain characters
Less than 90 minutes

Cons

Some scenes feature clunky dialogue that makes those moments stiff and unbelievable
Plot contrivances involving a character’s connection with the family
Missed opportunities to make the perspective more like a ghost
Editing, though intentional, is disjointed in ways that sometimes disconnect you from the experience

Plot & Thoughts

A family of four has moved into a new house. The older son, Tyler (Eddy Mayday), clearly is his mother’s favorite, as Presence quickly establishes her concerns about his future, and that his chances on the swim team are not compromised by anything. The father, Chris (Chris Sullivan), has a better relationship with their daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang), whose friend recently passed away. Chris does his best to restore Chloe’s confidence and tries to get his wife, Rebekah (Lucy Liu), to be more supportive of Chloe. There are some moments that suggest Rebekah is doing something illegal, which is causing a strain on the marriage. To add to the family drama, Tyler and Chloe come into conflict with each other about Chloe’s dead friend. Meanwhile, Tyler’s friend, Ryan (West Mulholland), is a suspicious skeezball with some issues who starts to court Chloe. Also, Chloe believes that the house is haunted by the spirit of her dead friend.

A majority of Presence is spent with the family and learning about the different dynamics between them through dialogue from the perspective of the spirit haunting their house. Yes, the entire film is viewed from the ghost’s perspective; the camera is the ghost’s point of view. This gives Presence a quality that is similar to found footage, as though someone is intentionally filming the events with a camera to be found later. It also makes many scenes throughout the film longer than average because the perspective cannot shift or be handed to someone else without cutting from the action to the next scene. Each scene change is a static cut to black, suggesting that the ghost does not always have a presence in the house or is incapable of understanding the flow of time, which is later confirmed by a psychic.

The best quality of Presence is its perspective and the unique experience it provides. Unfortunately, the nature of having long scenes from a silent perspective is that it also highlights the lower points of the movie. While the actors all do a decent to good job with the material, some of the material they get is not well written. The scene in which Tyler is telling his family about a cruel prank he played on a girl he knows is unbelievable and awkward as a result. Some scenes involving Rebekah and Chris squabbling with each other are good, and others are not so good because the dialogue does not sound natural. Had the dialogue gone through a few more rewrites and edits to draw out a more natural exchange between characters, instead of sounding like lines of a script written by someone who doesn’t know how humans interact, the quality of their scenes would have increased a lot. The long cuts highlight the awkwardness of the dialogue, but there are still some decent moments between characters that do manage to feel natural; it’s hit and miss.

Regardless of the dialogue, there is enough for Presence to hold your attention for its relatively short runtime. It ends just when it starts to wear out its welcome with a simple detail that is interesting and surprising. There’s not much horror to Presence, but the paranormal situation still manages to create tension around the events of the story.

TL;DR

Presence is mostly a character drama with a dysfunctional family that happens to have a ghost inhabiting their house. Some of the dialogue is awkward and unrealistic in certain scenes, but the unique perspective and the efforts of the cast make up for the lesser moments. At just under 90 minutes long, it’s a fun little story with some spooky mystery that won’t take up too much of your time.

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