ArcaMax

"Presence" is like an old "Paranormal Activity" movie told from the point of view of the paranormal entity. This is not immediately apparent. The movie opens with darting interior shots of a luxe suburban house in Anywhere USA (actually New Jersey). The camera, operated, as is often the case in his movies, by director Steven Soderbergh, whips us around the ground floor -- the usual living room, dining room, kitchen -- then up a staircase to the second-floor bedrooms, then over to a window looking out on the street, where a car is pulling up. Inside the car is a real estate agent named Cece (Julia Fox) and the family of four she's come to sell the house to. Eventually we find ourselves retreating, along with the film's POV, behind a louvered closet door.

The family is usefully troubled. The mother, Rebekah (Lucy Liu), is a stern business exec caught up in some sort of never-revealed illegal activity; the father, Chris (Chris Sullivan), is a doughy pushover dad; the eldest kid, Tyler (Eddy Maday), is a snotty jock, and his sister, Chloe (Callina Liang of "Foundation"), is heavily depressed about the recent overdose death of her best friend Natalia.

As becomes clear early on, when one frightened member of a house-painting crew refuses to enter Chloe's new bedroom (the one with the louvered door), these people are not alone in their new home.

Director Soderbergh, who vowed he was quitting the movie business a decade ago because it wasn't fun anymore, appears to still be enjoying himself. "Presence" is an exploration of the haunted-house horror-movie genre, ticking off the traditional elements -- menaced youth, clueless grownups, imported spirit-whisperer -- while pretty much ignoring the horror part. Admirers of the Oscar-winning filmmaker will find this instructive as always; horror fans, however, may find their fingers hovering over an imaginary snooze button.

The haunting stuff is pretty standard -- a shelf suddenly falling off a wall, a pile of clutter quietly rearranging itself without human involvement. Most of the significant action in the movie is guided by the characters' interrelations -- especially by Tyler's crypto-creepy pal Ryan (West Mulholland), who has a thing for Chloe, and is determined to pursue it. Whatever protective entity it is that's watching over Chloe is determined to block him.

The actors are solid, although Soderbergh's sometimes show-offy blocking of their scenes can be distracting. (At one point, looking into a window from outside the house, we note that all four characters have been hyper-carefully positioned not to obscure one another.) And screenwriter David Koepp's dialogue takes a bizarre turn in one scene in which Rebekah is alone in the kitchen with her son and tells him, "I've never been this close to another human being ever." ("Go to bed, Mom," Tyler says.)

The movie was shot in 18 days more than a year ago, and it has something of the feel of a weekend student-film project, although of course it looks great. (Soderbergh, who shot most of his 2018 thriller "Unsane" with an iPhone camera, here does the lensing with a consumer-grade Sony stills camera with 4K video capability.) At age 62, the man is still an indie wonder-kid at heart.

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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