Movie Review: Presence

I wasn't sure what to expect with a former A-lister like Lucy Liu showing up in a supernatural thriller. Add to that the fact that the director is Soderbergh, and I thought it would be worth a look. It was.
 
The movie overall is a typical ghost story. There's a presence in the house and no one knows what it wants. What's different is that this one is shot from the POV of the ghost itself. That was a novelty to me that was sort of interesting because a lot of the ghost's time is spent watching the family in the house fall apart.
 
The ghost story part is almost a side show to the family drama. Unfortunately, the family drama is relatively boring. Actually, it's very boring. The thing the parents are obliquely fighting over is never revealed.
 
Character-wise there is not much to like. Liu's character is a kind of clichéd East Asian mom who thinks the sun shines out of her son's ass at the expense of her daughter. The father is a well-meaning schlub. The son is a nasty, narcissistic ass. The daughter is a mopey intelligent young woman who is traumatized by the fentanyl death of her best friend. What mostly saves them is the quality of the dialog. That helps keep this motley cast from becoming unbearable.
 
What I most enjoyed was riding on the shoulder of the ghost. That kind of direction made the movie a little interesting. Unfortunately for me, that was it. The plot is banal. The characterization is nuanced but nuancing a boring person doesn't get you much.
 
Lacking most in this movie, especially for a thriller, was a sense of pace. There was no rising tension. There was no critical plot element to resolve. This movie just plodded to the end which incidentally was one of the most powerful scenes. So it was like hacking into the home security of a very boring family of unlikable people. I found it really frustrating because there was an underlying murder mystery that wasn't capitalized on..
 
The last thing I'll mention is that we see absolutely no other locations than the house. That turns the experience into something like a play with a few static sets that get cycled through. It reduces the sense of scope of the piece. Issues of work and school and the wider world are a bit truncated through this very restricted POV.
 
Overall, it's a watchable, slow burn of a quiet ghost story. It's not worth going to the theater for. This is something to stream on a rainy day when you have no energy to do much more than sit still.