Soderbergh horror Presence captivates; The Electric State sputters

The story: An American family moves into a two-storey suburban residence occupied by a supernatural entity.

- Whang Yee Ling

PRESENCE (M18) 85 minutes, opens on March 20 ★★★★☆

Sounds like any haunted house horror, except the director here is Steven Soderbergh.

Soderbergh has never made an uninteresting movie over a 36-year career stretching from the trailblazing indie Sex, Lies, And Videotape (1989) to the Ocean's heist trilogy (2001 to 2007) to the Magic Mike (2012 to 2023) multiplex franchise.

Every genre is a formal experiment for his craftsmanship and creative curiosity, and Presence is a ghost story told from the ghostly being's point of view, which would be Soderbergh's camera. Hollywood's nimblest auteur is often his own cinematographer and editor.

The spectre is a captivating presence. It is, from the start, in the house - the single locale in the screenplay by David Koepp, who also conceived Soderbergh's pandemic thriller Kimi (2022). It free-floats along the empty hallways, and up and down the stairs.

Then arrives the family.