Presence (2025)

Basically, it's just a story where sometimes you're like, "Damn, I'm a ghost, not just a camera."

The twist is good, and the room-splitting scene feels different after it.

Vibe

I don't compare this film with Soderbergh's previous works.
I admit, when watching the trailer, the film was sold to me by sophisticated camerawork) When watching it, it makes me a little seasick😁 we prepare the vestibular apparatus in advance.

If a good movie is when all the answers are given, don't go near the "Presence."

There didn't seem to be much music in the movie. The first track appeared at ~ 20 minutes, before that there were only dialogues, screeching, etc.)
Two screaming tracks from the movie puma blue- dream of you and Dominic Fike - Come Here.

The aftertaste of the film. What kind of people are bitches.

It will be interesting for me to watch it 2 times. If the lyrics hinted at what was happening, the "hints" in the paintings on the walls- I didn't think it would be interesting to read if they exist at all)

shit like this))

Very often you forget that you are watching a movie not about a silent cameraman, but about a ghost, because he interacts with the environment and the characters only five times per film. If you replace the ghost with an ordinary cat, the plot will hardly change, but it will become more interesting to watch.
Did the ghost knock the mug off the table? So cats can do the same thing. Did the ghost cause mayhem in the room? So can cats! :)

strong 6/10.
It feels like a YouTube movie, primarily because of the camera-like nature of the story, the first-person (albeit ghostly) shooting, and the ragged chronology of what is happening. All this feels like a graduate work of the directing department (which, in general, is not bad).
The plot is quite simple and does not raise any questions at the end of the viewing, although still some topics will not be disclosed, for example, the legal issues of the Payne family, which are touched upon at the beginning and in the middle, do not receive any denouement at all, or it was so fleeting that it was very easy to miss it.
It would be a big mistake to expect something like "Astral" and "Paranormal" phenomena. No, it's a different movie with a different content. It's NOT A HORROR MOVIE at ALL. Therefore, such expectations should be discarded.
At moments when the viewer wants to interact with what is happening, the ghost intervenes and this plays well for immersion.
In the end, a good movie for the evening. The movie theater was held in one breath

It's not a bad movie. Marketing and PR have created incorrect expectations among the audience, which leads to poor ratings. This is drama, not horror. At most, there are some scenes that give discomfort and a certain tension.
I watched it in the original in the cinema, it was intimate and not boring at all. The idea of viewing (observing) from the perspective of a ghost is fascinating, which generally imposes certain restrictions on the fact that the viewer will have limited information about the family, their relationships and their experiences. The main focus is on the problem of a daughter who is going through the loss of her friend. I liked this moment, because through the prism of grief, you can look at the film from a different perspective, as well as at the ghost itself.
I was pleased with the ending, it was unexpected and quite disturbing.
I think it would be really nice to add interactive ghost scenes and reveal the parents' lines, but on the other hand, the length of the film would not benefit the picture. Nevertheless, it's an interesting concept from the director.: how he sees the possibilities of a ghost, his involvement in the lives of living people and a specific mission.
The film is worth watching, especially if you've lost someone recently, and it has a therapeutic effect.

The film is billed as horror, but it's more of a psychological thriller, or even an experiment. Soderbergh is looking for himself in something new and presents this to us with his presentation.
The film is almost entirely tied to dialogues that build relationships between the characters. through all these emotions, the plot gradually unfolds. it opens slowly, but heats up to the finale and ends quickly, leaving behind an unusual aftertaste.

It's a good movie, but definitely not a horror movie.
The twist with my brother is good.

I would like to find advantages in Steven Soderbergh's new work, but perhaps the only positive thing is the idea to shoot the story from the perspective of a ghost. Technically, the problems are obvious from the very first minutes. No matter how hard the cameraman tries to pretend to be a ghost, he is strongly betrayed by the smooth movement of the camera, the repetition of the rhythm of the characters' steps and the static fading. If ghosts exist, then they were definitely operators in the past.

But the story is not so much about the otherworldly as about people. A ghost (we've already found out that it's not a ghost) is watching a family that has moved into a new house, bringing old problems into it. The daughter suffers from depression, the brother tries on the status of the "golden boy", the mother plays the tyrant, and the father ... well, just the father. Spying on their fights is not the most interesting thing. Unfortunately, the ghost didn't get the most suitable family for drama.

That's a cool idea. And it's beautifully shot, inventively. The actors are good. But it's boring! Something is clearly missing from the film. I didn't like it in the end.

Someone explain to me why the mother screams at the end - "My boy, he came back to save you!"
Why did you come back to save me? Was he a ghost?
At least that's what the last scene made me think.

There are advantages - the budget is only 2 million

Yeah, that's bullshit.
The most boring movie of 2025

I came across this movie by chance and decided to watch it, being interested in an unusual move — a horror movie from the face of a ghost. I must say right away that I expected a typical horror movie with screamers, an "evil" poltergeist, but there is no such thing here. It's an interesting idea, at least I've never seen it before. the ending is cool, even maybe not quite expected, which is also a plus. Overall, it's more drama than horror, but I'm betting 7/10 because it's a pretty good movie, and something new.

The most terrible thing here is the mother-son relationship

Interesting shot. If it wasn't for the ending, the movie would have been boring and meaningless. At the same time, the ending is predictable.

The film left some feeling of "underachievement" in all aspects.
- the idea of shooting from the ghost's perspective is clearly half-baked - it really feels more like a floating camera (one could at least somehow catch on and visually beat the medium's phrase that time flows differently for ghosts and reality is perceived differently)
- the idea of the plot itself is not enough - did you want to say something?
- in terms of horror, it's not that it's unfinished, it's not
that at all - if we consider it as a psychological thriller, there's also not enough tension.
- the denouement is so fast that you don't have time to realize that this is the climax - and against the background of the prolonged action, almost the entire time of the film was perceived at the level of "is that all?""
- the final shots of my son's reflection in the mirror are quite expected, but the question still remains - who was the ghost anyway? If it was an attempt to repeat the twists in "Strangers" (with Kidman) and "6 feeling" (with Willis), then - soryan - it didn't work out from the word "at all". There were hints there, and they were scattered throughout the film so skillfully that at the end you hit yourself on the forehead - so that's it, everything was on the surface, how did you not guess that? And here, even if you review it a second time, you probably won't find anything.
Thank you that the film runs for only an hour and a half - not much time is lost in fact for anything.

I tortured myself for a long time watching excerpts, it was really boring, because you forget that you are like a ghost, and not just a camera filming a family from different angles.
It was only the last 15 minutes of the film that got me hooked, the ending was unexpected for me personally, but the ending itself still left a misunderstanding. So the ghost is the eldest son, who is stuck in time and space in this state because he had to protect his sister? And after that, he kind of ascended?

They didn't bring horror, it's better to review the first Paranormal phenomenon)

The film pleasantly surprised me .. it was very interesting to watch.. I liked the ending too

Although I don't like mysticism in the mockumentary format.(they are already infuriating, tired of them), but this film stands out strongly for its peculiarity. Soderbergh still knows how to draw attention to his work.

Well, I wouldn't even guess that Soderbergh took it off. The music was great, and "Ghost Story" with Affleck and Mara came to mind. I expected a slightly different ending, that the relatives were somehow involved. Well, I'm afraid of such relationships in the family.

I got hooked right away, from the first shots it was a chill on the skin, and in the last scene it went straight to my heart.
I didn't understand the bad grades, then I watched the trailer and concluded:
Do not watch trailers of movies that have already been added to the viewing list
Do not focus on user ratings, although I usually agree with them, but here it is completely past them.

"The consequences of stupidity can be long-lasting." (from the film)
Not only long, but also total. Because stupidity is a product of the brain, which imagines itself to be the smartest, most cunning, most talented.
Stupidity is probably the biggest problem of all problems for all of humanity, and for each individual.

Steven Soderbergh is not one of my favorite directors, but he is definitely one of the most unusual Hollywood directors, whose projects and creative exercises are always, at least, interesting to watch.

Despite the fact that the script of the film was written by David Koepp ("Jurassic Park", "Death suits her", "Secret Window", "Echoes of Echo"), who is familiar with the genre firsthand, the concept of the film was born from Soderbergh himself, who suspects that an entity in the form of a gnome lives at his house.... sorry... the very "presence" that he and his wife nicknamed "Mimi." And as a creative person, Soderbergh began to spin the topic of what kind of entity it was, why it was in the house, whether it was angry that a pair of talking warm meat bags lived in its house. After rolling out 10 pages of the script, he gave the rest to Koepp to finish. By the way, Soderbergh's mom was a parapsychologist, but he himself is mostly skeptical about ghosts. How it combines in his head at the same time (skepticism and the essence in the house) is not entirely clear, but okay.

The biggest problem of the film is the moronic marketers who decided to sell the "Presence" as horror. At least, from the enigmatic videos, I got the impression that another paranormal phenomenon was waiting for me, but with an interesting technical finding, which is described below. but no! These are not horrors. Even though many of the reviewers on the payroll say otherwise, some viewers felt so uncomfortable that they had to leave the audience. "The Presence" is a mystical family drama with thriller elements. There are no horrors here, and it's better not to hope for them. I suspect that it was precisely because of this discrepancy in expectations that some of the audience did not like the film. But if you don't expect horror, then the rest of the "Presence" is an excellent example of mysticism.

If you remember, recently released "Then. Now. Then" Zemeckis, who put the camera in a corner and told the story of several generations without moving the camera. Soderbergh came up with another trick - to show the drama of the family through the eyes of a ghost who rarely "sits" in place, but within the house. Here, the camera is constantly moving, flying from one room to another, from one floor to another, rushing between the characters, eavesdropping on their conversations. Soderbergh acted as both a cameraman and an editor, uniquely presenting, in general, a familiar plot. In fact, it turns out to be a VR movie - except that you don't turn your head around. But the immersion is already maximal. One can feel Soderbergh's love for virtual reality and his desire for faster and more widespread adoption of this technology.

In general, another point of this narrative is interesting. We see all events through "Presence". It's like a protagonist. At the same time, it is not reflected in the mirrors, we do not see his face. How to convey the emotions of a faceless entity? Soderbergh coped with the task brilliantly: frustration, curiosity (take at least the first flight through the whole house, through which we are introduced to the interior), insecurity, care, anger - all this is literally felt on your own skin. Soderbergh is constantly coming up with new ways to convey the current state of his Presence to the viewer.

Despite the fact that the "Presence" has many limitations, both technical and artistic (however, there is nothing wrong with that - Soderbergh artificially set himself limits), the picture keeps you in suspense from beginning to end and retains the intrigue right up to the shocking final frame. However, the whole ending makes you squirm on the couch. By the way, I'm really proud (well, these are the reasons to be proud) that in the second act, when the psychic came (how else? This is Hollywood!) I threw in a theory about the reasons for the existence of a ghost in the house and still guessed the main trick - perhaps because I am familiar with the work of the screenwriter Koepp.

I won't say that Soderbergh has a midlife crisis - he probably passed it about twenty years ago - but his seventh decade has clearly made him think about life after death, about the goals of existence and about all that eternal, endless. His next film will probably be about garden beds and vegetable gardens.

"Presence" is an exciting, masterfully executed experiment in the genre of a mystical thriller, wonderful in terms of cinematography, musical accompaniment and raised topics. It may not be impressive as a horror movie, but I personally will always remember its performance.

P.S. "You won't die if you stand up for your sister at least once." Lol-cupcake-cheburek.

Rating: 8 turns of the screw out of 10

Idea for 10 execution for 5

It would seem that the idea is interesting, but how boring it actually turned out to be(

Great movie, especially as an example of a movie for three kopecks

The father told Tyler: You won't die if you stand up for your sister just once.
Fate: let's check it out

This is the first time I've seen a movie from the perspective of a Ghost, it was interesting and atypical)👀
But, first of all, I was infuriated by a mother who loved her successful son, giving up on her daughter, who was depressed because of the death of her close friend.😕
Secondly, I was very pleased with the father, who tried so hard to support (and supported) his daughter, understood her and did not consider her crazy.
Well, and thirdly, I still felt sorry for the kid who, although he bullied his sister, still saved her at the cost of his life ((( in fact, he turned out to be a real man.

And the fact that you can immobilize a person with powder and actually kill him became creepy.😐😬