Presence turns a haunted-house story into an unusual act of looking: the camera is the unseen presence, drifting through a family’s home and watching tensions build. Steven Soderbergh’s formal experiment is most compelling when that perspective makes us feel both the limits of the entity’s knowledge and its growing urge to intervene. The result is a slow-burn ghost story with a family drama at its center—not a parade of conventional scares.
What is Presence about?
A family moves into a suburban house already occupied by an unseen presence. The entity watches the household’s private moments and seems particularly drawn to Chloe, the daughter grieving the death of a friend. The premise gives the film a clear mystery, but its central question is less about identifying a ghost than about what it can perceive—and whether watching is all it can do.
The film keeps its late emotional turn and climactic events under wraps. That restraint suits a story built around partial knowledge: viewers are confined to the presence’s perspective, not given a neutral overview of the family or the house.
How does the ghost’s point of view shape the film?
The camera does not simply follow the characters; it is the story’s unseen presence. It glides through rooms, lingers on conversations and observes the family in long takes. BFI Sight and Sound notes Soderbergh’s use of a wide-angle 14mm lens, which helps the camera hover within the domestic space rather than behave like ordinary coverage.
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That viewpoint creates a productive discomfort. We can see more than any one family member may know, yet our access remains restricted to what the entity can witness. The camera’s movement gradually feels less like detached surveillance and more like attention: it is learning the household and becoming invested in what happens there. As Soderbergh put it in the Criterion Collection’s essay, “I wanted you to see it learn how to be.”
For viewers, that means the camera’s restraint becomes part of the suspense. It can watch, but observation is not the same as understanding, and understanding is not the same as having the power to help.
Rank #2
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Does the family drama justify the formal experiment?
Mostly, yes. The ghost-eye camera could have remained a clever technical trick, but the family’s strained relationships give it something meaningful to observe. BFI Sight and Sound describes the film as a family drama at heart and praises the performances; the domestic conflicts make the entity’s limited access matter. The camera is not just showing off a house’s layout—it is placing us inside a home where people conceal, misread and wound one another.
Associated Press critic Lindsey Bahr likewise judged that the film exceeds its gimmicky-on-paper premise, calling it “a heady experiment that transcends the somewhat gimmicky-on-paper premise — something Soderbergh manages to do alarmingly well and regularly.” That is a critical assessment rather than a guarantee that every viewer will find the device persuasive. The movie’s success depends on accepting its unusual camera as a character, not merely a stylistic flourish.
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Is Presence a horror movie?
It is a ghost story and a haunted-house movie, but its tension is built more around observation and slow dread than a steady rhythm of jump scares. AP described it as a slow-burn experience and praised the effect of its reveal. BFI, while positive about the family drama and acting, cautions that viewers already saturated with haunted-house films may tire of the setup.
That makes expectations important. If you want relentless shocks, the floating camera and domestic focus may feel too restrained. If you enjoy horror that uses perspective to make familiar rooms feel strange, the form is the attraction: every quiet stretch asks what the presence is noticing and what it can do with what it sees.
Rank #4
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Who made it, and what are the release details?
NEON identifies Presence as a 2025 film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp. Soderbergh developed the outline, while Koepp wrote the screenplay; Soderbergh also photographed and operated the camera, a hands-on role that fits the film’s single, persistent viewpoint. NEON’s official film page lists the credits and the film’s Blu-ray.
The film’s origin includes a personal anecdote, not evidence of a verified haunting. In a January 24, 2025 interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Soderbergh said a story about a death in a house he and his wife owned, along with a house sitter’s claimed sighting, prompted him to imagine the dead woman’s perspective. He recalled, “I began to wonder what it would be like to be Mimi, and be in this house, and feel like, ‘What are these people doing in my house—and is there anything that can be done?’” Read the interview.
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For the U.S. release, AP reported an 85-minute runtime and an R rating, with MPA content descriptors of teen drinking, drug material, sexuality, language and violence. Those details apply to the U.S. classification; ratings and availability can differ by territory. AP reported that Presence arrived on Hulu during the week of June 2–8, 2025, which is historical availability, not confirmation that it remains there now. Check NEON’s official page or your local listings for current viewing options.
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