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Is Steven Soderbergh the most underrated filmmaker working today?

It’s not like he’s starved for acclaim, of course. Soderbergh’s got a Best Director Oscar, plenty of awards and fame, plus great respect from critics and audiences alike. But how many directors take as big a swing as he does continually, experimented with the medium’s form and style, let alone hopping seamlessly from genre to genre? Then there is the fact that Soderbergh shoots almost all his films as cinematographer. Who else can say that? Soderbergh’s pseudonym is “Peter Andrews,” and he just shot the new ghost story PRESENCE. Like most of the filmmaker’s work, it’s clever, compelling, and economical. (The film only cost $2 million to make.) What makes PRESENCE even more exceptional is that Soderbergh’s camera is a character in the film too. It represents the POV of the ghost throughout the story. It’s a brilliant idea and execution.

Soderbergh can do bigbudget, all-star extravaganzas like the OCEAN’S ELEVEN films or TRAFFIC, but I find his best work is more often those smaller movies where his focus is simple and tight. KIMI, for example, from two years ago, starredZoë Kravitz as a computer programmer who uncovers a murder, and the film’s frugality made it even more tense. There weren’t the usual side stories and comic relief to distract us from the stakes. The same is true with PRESENCE as the 62-year-old filmmaker tells a character-driven haunter about a dysfunctional family interacting with a watchful ghost in their new home.

There are not only frights to be had here but a mystery as well. Who was this ghost in a former life? And why is it haunting the new residents? The family is an extremely well-to-do one with its careerist mom Rebecca (Lucy Liu), home renovator hubby Chris (Chris Sullivan), teen Chloe (Callina Liang), and her older brother Tyler (Eddy Maday). Is the ghost one of Chloe’s two classmates who died mysteriously in the last year? Or is it someother spirit left over from decades earlier? As the family’s spool out, one starts to wonder if maybe it’s some sort of karmic force catching up with them. We watch both as a fascinated audience as well as an agenda-driven ghost with whom we share its perspective. Every shot in the film is from that ghostly POV and it is not only novel, but often scary as hell.

The nuanced performances and screenwriting create plenty of sympathy for the likable if very flawed family. Soderbergh’s screenwriter here is David Koepp and he’s an expert storyteller, having authored everything from the first JURASSIC PARK and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films to Sam Raimi’s first SPIDER-MAN movie and the aforementioned KIMI. Koepp tells us a lot about the characters by what they say, and even more in what they don’t. Soderbergh’s camera and ghost often linger on them after the dialogue has ended in a scene giving us further insight into the personalities via their reactions afterward. Throughout it all, the ghost weaves in and out of rooms, glides up and down staircases, and even hides in closets. It’s both unnerving and cheekily humorous too. The ghost seems to have a particular affection for Chloe, often lingering in her room or even protecting her from various drama that arises. She feels it too, but is she clairvoyant or sensing her part in her friend’s doom cycle?

Soderbergh ensures the dynamics only get more complicated when Tyler’s new friend Ryan (West Mulholland) enters the picture, as does a local medium (Natalie Woolams-Torres) who immediately senses danger in the home. The production design is superb, the few visual effects are great rug pulls, and there is an eerie sense of sound design, along with minimal but insinuating music underlining matters from start to finish. The film’s budget may be only a fraction of the recent big budget frightener NOSFERATU, but I was on the edge of my seat more here.

Soderbergh may be underrated but since his auspicious debut of SEX, LIES & VIDEOTAPE in 1989, he’s been delivering the goods consistently as a director, cameraman, and often a writer too. PRESENCE may be a small film, but it deserves a big audience. And its final shot is the best terrifying image I’ve seen in a movie since the last one in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT made it so memorable back in 1999. It’s wholly unsettling, but then, so is this sharp, new film.

 

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