Steven Soderbergh’s haunted house movie, shown entirely from the perspective of a ghostly guardian, has a tense and superbly acted family drama at its heart.
Steven Soderbergh’s new horror movie “Presence,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is unsettling all right. The “Erin Brockovich” director moves his camera around so much, you want to yell at the screen, “Settle down, please! I have a headache!” There is a rationale for his nearly-non-stop motion shtick: the audience is experiencing the haunted house from the perspective of a ghost. And this particular ghost apparently needs to get its steps in. However, aside from a couple creepy voyeuristic scenes that the technique complements, its more obvious purpose is for Soderbergh to show off elaborate tracking shots.
Thirty-five years after his debut 'sex, lies, and videotape' wowed Sundance and kicked off a new era for American indie film, the hardest-and-fastest-working auteur in movies returns to the fest to push boundaries again.
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