Presence: The Real Ghost that Inspired Soderbergh's Movie

Presence: The Real Ghost that Inspired Soderbergh's Movie | Steven Soderbergh's new film was inspired by a ghostly presence discovered in a house in Los Angeles. The story follows a family in a suburban home but is narrated innovatively from the perspective of the ghost. Starring Lucy Liu and shot in 11 days in New Jersey, the project connects with Soderbergh's personal experiences, whose mother was a parapsychologist.

No one believes in ghosts until they have a close encounter. The story of Steven Soderbergh's new film came from the ghostly presence a friend of his family discovered in their Los Angeles home, which seemed to be connected to a former resident who had died by suicide.

The director of diverse genre films like Traffic, Contagion, Erin Brockovich, Solaris, Ocean's Eleven, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape, along with his family, even named this entity (Mimi), as he shared with journalist Emily Zemler last December from his current home in London, which was published on January 15 in the Los Angeles Times, just days before this production hit American theaters on January 24 under Neon's distribution.

Presence, the original title of the film, has a simple premise: A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they are not alone. In turn, this premise was developed after wondering if "Mimi" was annoyed to see them sharing the same space.

What makes this feature film different is that it's told from the ghost's perspective. This viewpoint means instead of discovering this supernatural force, it serves to observe the inside of a home where, according to the filmmaker, "a family under pressure is revealed, in danger of falling apart, and where the camera is the ghost."

This camera makes the presence float around the house, allowing the viewer to accompany it in a special way, since, according to actress Lucy Liu, Steven Soderbergh lets this omnipresent character be in various places, listening and seeing everything at once, but ensuring it's the viewer who takes the responsibility to see and hear what they want, giving interpretation to the story.

Liu plays the wife in this family, paired with Chris (Chris Sullivan), and their teenage children Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday). Regarding her character and the issues this family faces, she commented during the movie's promotion: "Rebecca's general lack of awareness, both towards her daughter and her husband's needs and her son's future, reveals much about her rigidity and inability to open up and see the whole picture, which the presence can see. When a person lives their life, they often don't step back to see how their behavior is causing harm in other respects, and thus, while the presence sees everything, she does not. I found it fascinating to observe a family that is not aware of how dysfunctional they are in their daily life."

Soderbergh repeated with this production a formula that worked for him in the past and which he claims is very profitable, namely self-financing and producing his own work (shooting and handling all post-production), then selling it to a studio or distributor. This was the case with the comedy starring Meryl Streep, Let Them All Talk, which he sold to Warner Bros/HBO Max, and now with this one, taken by Neon.

For the success of this production model and to attract interest from major industry distributors, the filmmaker keeps the movie controlled and small. The shooting of Presence took place in 2023 over 11 days in New Jersey. He also does many rehearsals with the actors to leave no room for improvisation, sticking to what's written in both the technical and literary script. Additionally, Soderbergh was behind the camera, doing the cinematography and editing.

Regarding how he works with actors, Lucy Liu told Black Girl Nerds: "He gave us no direction, and not just to me, but in general, we functioned as if we were on a stage, where the choreography of our movements and our attitudes with the camera came naturally. There was no lighting, no equipment on set, we just let the scenes unfold and he decided where or on whom the presence would focus. It was especially wonderful to hear someone having a conversation or monologue without the camera always focused on them."

Despite being a supernatural film, there are more personal components for Soderbergh since his mother, Mary Ann, was a parapsychologist, so discussions about unexplained matters and visits from believers were common for him. He told the Los Angeles Times that his mother's activities always caused him conflicts until, after becoming a father and now directing this movie, he understood that there are characteristics linking him to his mother, her studies, and her activities about the afterlife.

A Reference Movie

Presence slightly uses the film by Lewis Allen, The Uninvited (1944), as a reference, one of the must-see productions in the history of ghost movies. Allen told the story of two siblings (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) who buy a beautiful house on the Cornish coast at an unexpectedly low price, only to discover it's inhabited by a supernatural presence. One of the greatest significances of this horror classic lies in its tone, avoiding comic elements at all costs and not relying on flashy special effects, focusing essentially on suggestion.

To the American media, the filmmaker finally pointed out that he never saw the presence in his own house, but he certainly believed what his friend saw. He also believes the ghost is no longer there. He jokingly said he was pushed to his limits in this production, having to stop wearing the shoes he's used in every shoot since 2011 (with Haywire) to not make his presence felt in the least with the camera in each scene.

After this movie, he will soon (in March) release his latest production "Black Bag," a thriller he has produced with a major studio (Focus Features/Universal Pictures), starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, where these renowned actors play a married couple who are intelligence agents facing a difficult decision from him; to be loyal to his marriage or to his country when it's discovered she has committed an act of treason.

Presence has received an approval rating of 89% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

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