“Presence” by Steve Soderbergh now arrives in our rooms, after being successfully presented at the last Sundance Film Festival and having received the applause of international critics. This time the American director dedicates himself to horror, but does it with an atypical, conceptual, metaphorical, very personal film but with which he knows a universal metaphor.

“Presence” – The plot

But you look that Matto Steven Soderbergh, who arrives and with “Presence” gives us a film of ghosts that does not even seem like a ghost movie, looks like a movie about us, I know what we have become, on how our world has changed. He says he has really seen ghosts, of having Soderbergh at home, and therefore this is a very particular film for him, who opts for a conceptual, minimal exercise exercise could be said. “Presence” lasts less than 90 minutes, it is a very sui generis supernatural horror, we also say atypical compared to the contemporary, in its narrative structure, and also in its aesthetic. The most underestimated director of his generation, taking advantage of his usual partnership with David Koepp, returns to the origins of the genre, to his essence, the one that transforms the domestic walls into a trap. The trap, however, is for us, yes because in “present” our gaze overlaps with that of the ghost, which observes this family in crisis, formed by the father Chris (Chris Sullivan), Rebekah (Lucy Liu), Chloe (Callina Ling) and Tyler (Eddy Maday). There is no good air for home, Rebekah is investigated for financial crimes, Chloe has just lost her friend Nadia recently.

They move to that house in the suburbs aware that it will not be easy, but they don’t imagine how much. Quarrels, discussions, misunderstandings, the tension that grows, the incommunicability that dominates. Yes, perhaps it was not a great idea to take that house, a house that, obviously the new tenants will discover it over time, is dominated by an otherworldly entity which, however, is invisible. The film La chisel as made of noises, suggestions, but above all it feeds on our gaze that overlaps with his, the use of the wide angle, to this cold photograph of Peter Andrews, at the 14mm with which Steven Soderbergh embraces our gaze in this technique twentieth century. “Presence” to a certain gives birth to the doubt in us: we believe in ghosts because we believe in the afterlife, or did we create them to think of someone who listens to us when no one else does it? “Presence” more than a horror, it becomes a reasoning on horror as an expressive form for Steven Soderbergh, in a film that talks to us about cinema, of a particular genre, why fascinates us and why it is still so popular today, in spite of the change that changes, of the technology that takes possession of us and our world.

There is talk of ghosts but there is no talk of ghosts

“Presence” makes use of a cast that knows perfectly how to make itself interpreter not only of normality, but also of the ambiguity of human relationships, which then the password of this film, in which this ghost is passive, as we are passive, in life, even in ours. Every now and then he makes himself heard, Chloe understands that there is something within those walls, we even come to convene a sensory, then here at the end, everything changes, as a mere observer that presence becomes an agent of a sudden action, of a transversal change. Looking at his latest works, it is clear that Steven Soderbergh is questioning about the relationship in crisis between man and action, how modern society has made us more and more passive, inert, but above all suffering from voyeurism. Socials, technology, made us ghosts of our own life, of our time and space, the same concept of video narration has become prolongation of our identity, exemplification of the domain of the narrative, whatever it is, on the real action in the real world. “Presence” explores our daily lives in a show where we feel on the sidelines, almost ashamed of our omniscence.

Let’s see everything that those people feel, feel, discuss. It therefore appears clear that passivity is the semantic subtext of this film, so essential, from certain points of view it would be said almost so classic in its structure. Perfect direction, calibrated in every detail, a perfect use of lights and shadows, of the fear that is not finally for that being, but for the real world, for what we can do with each other. The paranormal horror in the 21st century took the place of what was once the slasher, survived the birth of torture, but it is and remains, since the Victorian narrative, and then sinking into the mythology, folklore, the great protagonist of the genre on the big screen. What Steven Soderbergh did with “presentce” was to use all this baggage to provide us with an optimistic story, made up of a melancholy hope, winking at M. Night Shyamalan and what gave us. It is unlikely that everyone liked, in particular to the mainstream public, the one that conceives this type of film as a fight against an elsewhere, threatening presences and blood. But moreover, Soderbergh has never been one who smooth the audience in the right direction, he has always gone on his way.

VOTE: 7.5