Presence takes place in one very big house.  The Payne family — Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their teenage children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang) — have moved into the house, little aware that it is already haunted by a poltergeist.  The entire film is seen through the eyes of the poltergeist, the Presence.

The Presence floats through the house, going from room to room and allowing us to hear snippets of conversation that help us to put the plot together.  The Paynes have moved to what they hope will be a better neighborhood and school district for their children.  Tyler is a swimmer and his new school will perhaps make it easier for him to get the attention of college scouts.  Chloe is still mourning the death of one of her friends.  Her friend died of a drug overdose and we hear enough conversations to learn that drugs were apparently a problem at Chloe’s old school.  More than one of Chloe’s classmates have died.  Chris keeps an eye on Chloe, looking for any signs of drug addiction.  Rebekah, meanwhile, is more concerned with the future of Tyler.  As for the Presence, it gets upset easily.  It’s not happy that Chloe seems to like Ryan (West Mulholland), a friend of Tyler’s who, at first, seems like almost a parody of sensitivity.  The Presence gets even more upset when Tyler circulates a nude photo of another student online.  What does the Presence want with the Paynes and will Rebekah and Chris’s already strained marriage survive the pressure of living with the mysterious spirit?

Written by David Koepp and directed by Steven Soderbergh, Presence is told with long takes and naturalistic lighting.  Following the film’s plot requires listening to snippets of conversations that sometimes drift in from a neighboring room.  It’s an interesting technique, or at least it is for the first half of the film.  Eventually, it becomes apparent that Soderbergh is more interested in the film as a technical experiment than as an actual story involving interesting characters or surprising twists.  At first, the long shots and the lack of close-ups seem to symbolize that the Presence is an outsider amongst the living family but eventually, they come to symbolize Soderbergh’s detachment from the story that he’s telling.  As with so many of Soderbergh’s genre exercises, it’s a film that’s easier to respect than enjoy.  Soderbergh sticks with his technique for the entire film, even when it would easier to abandon it.  I appreciate the dedication but sometimes, I wish Soderbergh could just make a genre film without continually trying to convince us that he’s actually too good for the material.

On the plus side, Soderbergh does get fairly effective performances from his cast.  There’s a twist involving Ryan’s character that isn’t really surprising but West Mulholland still does an excellent job selling it.  Callina Liang realistically portrays Chloe’s sadness and I could definitely relate to her need to rebel, as I would think anyone who has ever been a teenager would.  As so often happens with Soderbergh’s films, the extreme stylization gets in the way of the story but Liang still brings a bit humanity to Soderbergh’s chilly vision.