Steven Soderbergh gets spooky in this new haunted house flick.
How to watch Presence in New Zealand
Presence is haunting New Zealand cinemas from February 6, 2025.
Presence
What is Presence about?
Director Steven Soderbergh (all kinds of stuff, but let’s go with Ocean’s Eleven) and screenwriter David Koepp (again, all kinds of stuff, but he did pen the similarly spooky Stir of Echoes) bring us this new twist on the old haunted house narrative model. It sees the Payne family move into their new suburban home, only to find it apparently haunted. The wrinkle here is that the entire film is shot from the point of view of the titular presence in a series of long takes, a technique you see a bot of in slasher movies, but not so often in the more chilly realm of the ghost story. Who the ghost is, or even if it is a ghost is a mystery, of course, so far be it from us to disclose anything further.
The cast of Presence
Lucy Liu is mum Rebecca Payne; Chris Sullivan is dad Chris Payne; Callina Liang is sensitive teenager Chloe Payne, who is grieving the recent death of her best friend; Eddy Maday is son Tyler Payne, an arrogant swimming star; West Mulholland is Ryan, Chloe’s boyfriend; Julia Fox is Cece, the realtor; Natalie Woolams-Torres is Lisa, the medium brought in to sus out the situation; and Lucas Papaelias is Carl, Lisa’s husband.
Presence trailer
Why we’re excited about Presence
It’s always fun when Steven Soderbergh does his little genre explorations, isn’t it? And with David Koepp’s steady hand on the script, we’re expecting a classical ghost story told with a dash of stylistic flair. The whole thing was shot in only eleven days on a two million dollar budget, too, which is certainly impressive. Whether it’s impressive enough to warrant a cinema ticket is a bit subjective, though.
