Presence

[Dicktar2023]

I watched Soderbergh's 2024 movie Presence over the weekend and I have thoughts.

The idea here is a low-key, slow-burn, single-set ghost story, about a house haunted occupied by the titular presence, which provides the POV of the entire movie. The movie is composed of a series of real-time scenes about the family that moves in. The ghost observes their domestic dramas and becomes more and more active. David Koepp wrote the script, based on an idea by Soderbergh.

So, the most important thing I want to say about this movie is how [fork]ing great it looks. This is a scandalously beautiful movie. We live in an era where $250 million is spent on films that look like they were shot with a webcam, then digitally "fixed" on a hard drive, where colors are added and scaled so that they look exactly like every other movie. There are two color schemes available in Hollywood these days: “David Fincher” and “Christopher Nolan.”

I'm not sure what camera Soderbergh (acting as his own DP) used for this--maybe he borrowed the souped-up IPhone that Sean Baker used on some of his gorgeous early movies? The setting is a well-lit, modern house, not some spooky Gothic mansion, but we get rich, inky darkness next to bright, varied colors (not just the standard green/orange/blue color scheme), and vivid textures.

Why does a low-budget ($2 million) lark like this, made basically in Soderbergh's free time, look so much better than literally every other movie I've seen this year (yes, even Sinners, which was shot in “David Fincher”)? There is a shot in this movie of a teen girl's room--just her bed stacked with clothes and stuffed animals and blankets--that's probably going to be the most memorable single frame I see this year. Just because it has actual, real world colors in it, that exist outside of a digital color filter. Just because somebody took the time to worry about the colors as they actually existed on the set.

It shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t be excited days later that I spotted periwinkle and robin’s egg blue in a movie—in the same frame!! I shouldn’t be able to name the last movie I saw, years ago, where that happened (Barbie).

There is conversation these days about practical special effects. What about practical colors?

As for the rest of the movie…it’s intriguing until the terrible final scene, when it forgets the rules of its own mythology and leans into a tedious plot twist. A key dramatic moment is so poorly staged that it turns into slapstick. I actually laughed out loud.

But if you have Hulu and 90 minutes, check it out. I’m telling you: periwinkle.

[Barksdale's People]

I watched this about a month ago with no background while on a horror kick. Definitely not a horror movie and I really didn’t/don’t understand how the “presence” came about before the plot of the movie. That being said it was a unique perspective and overall a solid movie.