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Steven Soderbergh’s Presence: A Chilling Descent into the Unseen

03 Monday Feb 2025

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A family move into a new home and begin to suspect that there is a supernatural “presence” also in the house.

So, what next? Charge it rent?

Don’t be silly, it’s not a comedy.

“Presence” is a new supernatural thriller from “retired” (quotation marks used for sarcasm) director Steven Soderbergh.

Look, to be honest, this reaffirms that old saying of – ‘there’s no new stories, just different ways to tell them.’ And this is one of those.

Told from the perspective of the entity itself, this is not too dissimilar to last years “In A Violent Nature,” where we see a traditional horror, this time a ghost story, from a different viewpoint.

Tech-wise, as a fellow filmmaker/video producer I went into a tech nerd-spin with how they shot this. Shot with a Sony A9 III, because of its global shutter meaning in basic terms: it captures all of the pixels at once and you don’t have that bendy-wendy-wobbly look (yes, that term is absolutely a tech term, in fact it’s trademarked to me) when you whip the camera around like most digital cameras that have a rolling shutter.

So, Soderbergh (using the pseudonym Peter Andrews as Director of Photography) essentially chucked the Sony camera on a gimbal with a 14mm Sony G Master lens and wandered around the house capturing the action. Lighting-wise, this was all done via available/practical lights. The cast have stated in interviews that the bulbs in the lamps/house lights were a lot brighter than normal bulbs, which makes me suspect that he used the Aputure Accent B7C practical bulbs so he could adjust brightness/temp/colour.

But all that tech jargon aside, what makes this super-interesting is Soderbergh once again strips back the budget constraints of feature filmmaking, buying the camera/lights/gimbal/lens would’ve come in at less than $30k. And just as he did with “Unsane,” where he shot it all on an iPhone, Soderbergh shows modern filmmakers that story is key.

Now does the story stand up?

Meh, kinda.

I really enjoyed it and not just for the tech-nerd stuff. Story wise, it’s a fairly standard ghost story. But it’s told well.

Would I pay to see it at the cinema?

Probably not. This definitely reminds me of those “Hammer House of Horror”/”Tales From The Unexpected” type TV films.

So maybe save your pennies and wait for it to hit the streaming services.

It is very enjoyable though and I recommend it.

I can absolutely see it making my top ten horrors of 2025.

  • Myles Davies

Movie review: Unsane

11 Monday Jun 2018

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Steven Soderbergh’s bold venture into the horror scene would display his usual flair for the experimental by shooting the entire thing on an iPhone and utilising the sublime acting ability of Claire Foy, who seems to be on a massive trajectory right now following The Crown. Keep an eye out for The Girl in the Spider’s Web and First Man, both due out later in the year.

Foy certainly owns this movie too, eking out every ounce of her physical and mental prowess to deliver a cracking turn as an incredibly unhinged Sawyer Valentini. Her intrinsic mannerisms have you questioning her actions from the outset as she appears quite reserved and a little rude with one of her colleagues, to then venture outside the office building to talk with her mother, fabricating every detail of her day in order to appease, before venturing back inside. This leaves you wondering who is Sawyer Valentini?
The plotline takes a significant left turn however when Sawyer is committed into a mental institute for 24 hours after she visits a counselor and unwittingly signs a consent form volunteering her to do so.

Once inside, she tries to pull all the stops to be released but has a violent encounter with a fellow patient, Violet (a magnificent Juno Temple) and she has to resort to calling her mum (Amy Irving – Carrie, The Fury) to try and bail her out.

The convoluted narration has a few more twists up its sleeve though as we discover one of the doctors happens to be her stalker that she has been trying to run away from. The stalker in question is played by Joshua Leonard (Blair Witch Project) lends weight to the strength of the casting in this film as he excels as the main antagonist, David.

There’s even a superb cameo from Matt Damon as Detective Ferguson, who advises Sawyer on how to stay protected from her stalker.

The twists and turns that Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer provide with their screenplay is both Unsane’s genius and its Achilles heel as the viewer is dragged along Sawyer’s descent into hell through a crazed labyrinth before a climax that questions all that has unfolded.

 

The Diagnosis:

People will either love or hate this film, there’s no in-between. It took me a little while to register my feelings towards Unsane as I was mesmerized by Foy’s performance on screen, proving she is a force to be reckoned with. And yet, the storyline can leave you a little baffled and unsure of how it makes you feel by the time the end credits roll.