During one of the first conversations between the parents in Steven Soderbergh’s new paranormal thriller, Presence, we’re presented with the two battling philosophies of the film: Do we have to confront grief or does grief confront us? The film, one in the latest of Soderbergh’s filmmaking experiments, is a ghost story told from the literal point of view of the ghost. The camera acts as the ethereal eyes of the spectre haunting the home of Chloe (Callina Liang), who recently lost a friend to a drug overdose. The passing has caused Chloe to distance herself from her family of which her father, Chris (Chris Sullivan) is sympathetic. Her mother Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and brother Tyler (Eddy Mayday) are less so. Rebekah’s ‘time heals all wounds’ method is clearly throwing a wrench into her relationship with her family, but she’s too preoccupied by work and Tyler’s social life to even notice.

“I mean, it’s life.”

“Actually, it’s death.”

After moving into their new home, Chloe immediately senses there is something in the house. She makes eye contact with the camera lens, even though she can’t necessarily see the ghost. This fourth wall breaking device is deployed throughout the film. It always feels like the audience is walking in on private moments. It’s never vouyeristic or inappropriate. Writer David Keopp takes careful steps to making the ghost/us feel like a nurturing presence. The ghost is able to interact with the living world in the cliche ways ghosts do: moving books, messing with lights, knocking over objects. Through these actions, we understand that whoever the viewer is supposed to be, we mean no harm. This subversion quickly sheds the horror expectations that the trailer and premise might have spurred up.

The film is composed of long wide-angle takes, either floating throughout the house or fixed to one on one conversation. The long takes are halted by stark cuts to black, implying what we’re witnessing isn’t important or that the ghost is losing connection to the home. The closet in Chloe’s room is typically where the ghost starts its wandering, as if it’s a charging bay for linking to the other side. Since the camera is not only the ghost, but also the audience, we only have as much information as we can handle. During a scene with a psychic in the middle of the film, she says the presence doesn’t know who, where, or when it is, which is exactly the experience the viewer is going through. It’s a clever way of setting up the rules of the ghost works for the audience and the family, but that scene sets into motion some choices the film doesn’t quite recover from.

This grief-striken ghost story half-heartedly becomes the ghost trying to solve its own murder and prevent the next one. There are films like David Lowery’s A Ghost Story that specifically deal with how the ones we leave behind deal with our departure so perhaps Presence shifting into a bit of a crime thriller for the last third may be seen as a welcome burst of entertainment value. Personally, there might have been more meat on that bone if the movie wasn’t so invested in the bizarre family dynamics. Rebekah is obsessed with her son to the point of lauding over him while he recounts an extremely mean-spirited prank. Chris tries his best to stand up for Chloe, but is distracted by an incomprehensible legal c-plot that never gets resolved.

A family drama that gets interrupted by a murder mystery from the perspective of a ghost sounds compelling enough, but the family drama ended up getting too much screen time to get invested in the latter. The final scene of the film gives us the closest thing to an answer to the question of battling philosophies on grief, but by that point, it might have been too late.

3 out of 5 stars

The movie works best when it feels like a meditation on grief and our connection to our loved ones who have passed. Where it takes a nosedive is in becoming a crime thriller where the clues are given to you along with the news of the murder. It’s worth seeing during the end of January releases if you’re done checking up on the Oscar fare.