Presence
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Year Released: 2024
Rating: 1.0
The Payne family, consisting of Rebecca (Lucy Liu), her husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their teenage kids Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday), move into a new house (in Jersey!) while a spectre roams around that, at first, only Chloe can sense - which everyone originally dismisses because she's been having emotional problems over the recent deaths of two friends - and then they all become aware of its existence. This is another one of Soderbergh's "technical projects" where the constantly roving camera is actually the P.O.V. of the "spirit" - it feels like a COVID-19 production since it's confined to a single location - except the technique is consistently distracting and it doesn't even have the courtesy of being a little "spooky" ... and then it has Tyler's "popular" pal Ryan (West Mulholland) turn out to be some sort of serial killer who's really into suffocating girls and drugging people, which doesn't fit what there is of a plot. The final scenes are so atrociously done they're downright laughable, which is something I'd expect from a film student and not an inexplicably adored director (and producer and cinematographer and editor) in his sixties.