"Presence" Final Trailer: Steven Soderbergh Offers a Unique Twist on the Haunted House Tale Starring Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan

Steven Soderbergh Offers a Fresh Take on Haunted House Horror, Told from the Perspective of the Ghost — Starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, and Callina Liang

Ghost stories are a dime a dozen, and haunted house tales, at this point, are even more tired and predictable. So, what’s the trick to telling these types of scary stories in a new and innovative way? Enter filmmaker Steven Soderbergh with his unconventional and bold approach: he creates an unnerving horror thriller about a family who unknowingly moves into a haunted house. Now, you might ask yourself, "So, what's so new and innovative about that?" Well, the twist is that the entire movie is told from the perspective of an unseen apparition as it haunts each member of the family. In cinematic terms, this means Soderbergh only uses wide-angle lenses, avoiding any close-up shots, making the haunting feel even more unsettling and immersive.

"You have a presence here," says a spiritual mediator standing in the living room with the family in the final trailer for Soderbergh's latest. "It's trying to figure you out, it's trying to connect to you." The family responds with merely stunned faces, as if to say, "What do we do with that information?"

Well, obviously, the joke is, "It's time to move, right?" But, like all haunted house movies, the family decides to stick it out. Because, hey, what’s the worst that could happen?

That's the thing. Soderbergh, with his slow, deliberate camera movements—creeping from left to right and from top to bottom—seemingly transforms what could be an unbelievable scenario into something that feels a little more visceral and atmospheric.

Presence, hailing from Neon Films, the same distributor behind Anora, Longlegs, and Parasite, arrives at a time when horror films are more popular than ever. Filmmakers are branching out, finding new and creepy ways to scare audiences. Soderbergh, never one to shy away from experimenting with his films, may have just concocted a fresh formula for telling ghost stories.

The film stars Lucy Liu (Kill Bill: Vol. 1), Julia Fox (Uncut Gems), Chris Sullivan (This Is Us), Callina Liang (Foundation), Eddy Maday, and West Mulholland (Dark Harvest). Liu and Sullivan play the married couple at the center of the horror story, grappling with the unsettling idea that their new home is haunted, which only complicates things further as they try to raise their teenage daughter (Liang).

Soderbergh directs from a script by veteran Hollywood screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Stir of Echoes). They previously collaborated together on the 2022 claustrophobic techno/lockdown thriller Kimi, starring Zoe Kravitz. They have another movie together coming out in a couple of months with Black Bag, a twisty espionage thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett. Koepp, a prolific filmmaker in his own right, also just penned the script for the forthcoming Jurassic Park installment Jurassic World Rebirth starring Scarlett Johansson, slated to open this summer.

Presence opens in theaters on January 17th.