The Most Unusual Horror of Recent Years Just Dropped – It Already Has 87% on RT
An experimental horror that ends up being a heartbreaking drama.
In 1944, Lewis Allen's horror film The Uninvited was released on the big screen, about a brother and sister from London who buy a house and discover the presence of otherworldly forces there.
Many years later, the screenwriter of Panic Room and Secret Window, David Koepp, took notice of the film and invited Steven Soderbergh to take on a modern adaptation.
Steven Soderbergh Has Been Interested in Ghosts Since Childhood
A creative conflict over the ending prevented the project from being completed, but the filmmakers remained on good terms. However, Soderbergh's thoughts about ghosts never left him, and for good reason.
As a child, the future director heard about the afterlife from his mother, a parapsychologist, and as an adult he encountered a mythical ghostly figure in his own home in Los Angeles.
Koepp received eight pages of script from Soderbergh, from which it was clear only that the action would take place in a house, and that the story would be told from the point of view of a presence trapped within its walls.
What Is Presence About?
The door opens and a woman enters the house, followed by a family of four. The couple, Rebecca and Chris, discuss the building's convenient location, and the children, Tyler and Chloe, study the view of the courtyard and the second-floor rooms.
The reasonable price and the vintage furniture attract the potential buyers, who soon return with their belongings. And all seems well, but a strange feeling of the presence of otherworldly forces gives Chloe, who recently lost a close friend, no rest.
Meanwhile, the entity watches the family and feels that something needs to be done, but does not understand what exactly, because it does not remember who it was or what it was meant to become.
The Movie Makes the Viewer a Participant in the Action
Although the movie begins with a cliché, it does not develop according to the usual rules of the genre, but offers a drama in which the otherworldly force does not want to kill and throw things, but rather evokes compassion.
At first, the presence is confused: it wanders through the corridors and rooms, almost oblivious to the people around it. The presence hides in a closet and tries to think about what it has seen: it has no physical shell and therefore no language – the viewer is deprived of an explanatory voiceover.
Soderbergh asks questions, inviting the viewer to join the investigation and play a game to get to the solution before the mysterious presence.
Presence Is an Interesting Experiment Made by the Sure Hand of a Master
Presence is a small but worthy movie, not in a hurry and not trying to prove anything.
It is an experiment whose purpose is to accept another challenge, to realize the planned scenario, to deal with family traumas and questions that have been haunting us for a long time, and then to see what comes out of it.