Presence – The 2K Edition of Steven Soderbergh's Film

Steven Soderbergh continues to move with a creative freedom that few mainstream directors possess, and Presence is yet another demonstration of this. Presented as a “ghost film,” in reality, the American filmmaker's new work reveals itself to be an intimate observation of an American family grappling with unresolved grief, yet enveloped in an atmosphere that constantly leans towards the disturbing. The screenplay by David Koepp, a veteran writer of blockbusters and supernatural thrillers (Spider-Man 2002, Mission: Impossible 1996, Black Bag among many), allows the director to construct a minimalist but surprisingly incisive film.

The most curious element of the operation is the choice of point of view. Presence does not follow the characters in the traditional sense, but adopts the gaze of the entity inhabiting the new house where the family moves. This is not an extemporaneous narrative trick: the entire film is built on this perspective, with the viewer trapped within the walls of the dwelling, just like the presence that resides there. The narrative proceeds in blocks of long takes, supported by the use of wide-angle lenses, transforming every movement of the characters into an almost choreographic event, while the neutral and realistic lighting accentuates the feeling of being physically present in the space, as an invisible part of the domestic routine.

Dense and Engaging Psychological Horror

In this immersive context, the emotional heart of the film is the young protagonist played by Callina Liang. More than anyone else, she projects a contagious fragility into the story: the pain of the recent loss of a friend, which the screenplay treats delicately and only apparently collateral to the events, is the true dramatic engine. Liang delivers a surprisingly mature performance, rich in expressiveness that communicates more than the dialogues themselves. Alongside her are Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan, parents lost in difficult communication within a marriage that no longer works, even more bewildered by inexplicable phenomena.

Soderbergh does not seek cheap thrills or the construction of textbook scares. His direction plays on anticipation, on distances, on what remains off-screen or merely hinted at. The scenes where the family leaves the house and the entity's gaze remains fixed on them, from behind a window, perfectly encapsulate the spirit of the film: melancholic, restless, almost affectionate. There is a subtext that speaks of loneliness, of bonds that persist beyond death, of omens and houses that preserve emotions and souls as if they were imprints.

Presence: Total Experimentation

Presence does not claim to reinvent horror cinema, nor to be a philosophical reflection on the supernatural. It is an intimate work, built with formal rigor and the ambition to observe pain from an unusual angle. The result is a film that lingers due to its (un)quiet originality and the delicacy with which it addresses themes that could easily slip into melodrama, with a shocking event in the final part and an equally intense resolution. Once again, this great director demonstrates that true experimentation is not in special effects, but in the way we choose to look at a story.

Eclectic in his works even with respect to hardware, which in this case sees the use of Sony Alpha 9 Mark III (video approximately 20 Megapixels), an excellent camera but certainly not designed for digital cinema, whose body can be purchased for about €6,000. This demonstrates that even with such a camera rig, it was possible to create artistically excellent footage. Technical data online confirm the native 4K footage, which was used as the basis for the best edition for the Italian market.

Presence 2K - How it Looks

Image format 1.78:1 (1920 x 1080/24p), contrary to expectations, this time we are faced with a choice that is too budget-conscious on a single-layer BD-25. Despite a viewing experience that largely does justice to the work of the cinematographer "Peter Andrews" (a pseudonym for Soderbergh himself), one becomes aware of the limitations in the encoding with hints of banding and “break-ups” in the chromatic gradients on the walls in dimly lit scenes. The spectacle remains enjoyable even on large screens, with excellent color richness and remarkable black depth.

Presence 2K - How it Sounds

A single-layer disc that most likely also influenced the choice of audio tracks at only 16 and not 24 bit. DTS-HD MA 5.1 Italian and English with decent rendering, favoring dialogue from the center channel and only at certain moments favoring the soundtrack and effects, with presence also from the front L/R channels and echo from the rear. We imagine that the overall result would not be too distant from the offering of the US UHD disc which, in contrast, offers Dolby TrueHD 7.1 with ATMOS objects.

Presence 2K - The Extras

Equally, the work deserved focus on its making, and here too we are truly at a minimum with the extras and only the trailer, which is also absent from US releases. Included is a booklet with textual insights by Nocturno; cardboard slipcover.