Film

Title: Presence

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Stars: Callina Liang, Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Eddy Maday

This haunted house film is fabulous until it gets tripped up by its final reveal, but it’s worth a watch. The point of view is that of an entity inhabiting the unremarkable suburban home, with a penchant for a particular wardrobe. I was quite happy not knowing the entity’s identity and story, and enjoyed the constraint of having pieces of story provided only by what it can hear or see from its vantage points within the home. A family moves in and the dynamics are built through vignettes: tiger mum has a business secret as well as devotion to her son’s swimming career, dad isn’t coping, daughter is suffering from the death of her best friend from an apparent drug overdose (one of two). But at the end, the time paradox referenced by a medium undermines the simple elegance of the set-up, and narrative coherence – already a little frayed by the side plot of dead students – unspools. That wardrobe? Ew.