Presence--My Take On The Movie With Spoilers!
Plot: A family moves into a new house and soon discovers a presence in their house.
My Thoughts About the Movie
Presence is a unique take on a house haunting where we see the events unfold through a ghost's point of view.
However, in the first half hour of the movie, you will wonder if this is the most boring ghost in the world. It clearly doesn't know how to haunt people properly and is content with simply tidying up rooms and hiding in closets.
It is the twist in the end that sort of saves the movie, although it is also bound to make you feel confused as you try to connect the dots.
Quick Movie Review
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the cast that consists of Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Calling Liang, and Eddy Maday, who do a commendable job playing a family that is falling apart after a tragic event.
However, I couldn't help but feel that Lucy Liu was wasted in her role as a mother who gets any focus only at the end of the movie.
The story requires a lot of patience, and midway, you may find a hint alluding to the final twist, but the story itself clearly required some tightening, especially where characters and their motives were concerned.
For example, what was the fraud Rebekah conducted at her work. Why was Chris considering separating from her? To what degree was the fraud committed that it could incriminate him as well?
And we won't talk about Tyler just yet.
Presence is an interesting movie but might not be the most creepy movie you will watch. The twist may be appealing, but it doesn't necessarily save the otherwise mundane movie.
PRESENCE Movie Plot
The movie begins with the Presence moving about an empty house, day and night.
Finally, one morning, a realtor enters and sets up the house for the showing.
A family of four enters: Rebekah, Chris, and their children Chloe and Tyler.
Chris is pretty much walking on eggshells around Chloe because she has just lost two of her best friends and is in a fragile state.
Tyler is the star son of the family. He's good at everything at school.
The family looks around the house and decides to buy it.
The walls need painting, and so before they move in, the painters work on it, but the supervisor notes that the room, which eventually goes to Chloe, is taking time. He asks the worker there and is told that his colleague refuses to even enter the room and is scared of something.
Finally, the house is ready, and the family moves in. Chloe's room is initially neat and tidy, but as the movie progresses, she becomes a slob, and her mother has to occasionally come in and pick up clothes from the floor.
At one point, the Presence has to pick up her books from the bed and place them neatly on the desk because Chloe prefers not to pick up after herself. When she returns from the bathroom, she lets out a shriek, unable to even consider the possibility that perhaps, for once, she had been organized.
Chris comes over to check up on her, and she makes up an excuse of spotting a rat but doesn't want Chris to look for it. He leaves but then confides in Rebekah that perhaps they need to get Chloe tested as she may be taking illegal substances like her friends. Rebekah dismisses him and is always seen on her laptop, possibly committing some fraud.
Tyler, who usually avoids Chloe, one day is bringing up his friend Ryan and casually stops by her room to introduce him.
After casual hellos are exchanged, Ryan shows an interest in Chloe. Tyler is too busy planning a prank on a girl called Simone at school.
Later, Ryan and Chloe are seen entering the house together. She offers him a drink, but he says no. She asks him if he wants to see her room, and again, he shows no interest. Chloe teases him for not reading signals, but he wants to tell her about Tyler's prank. When Chloe shrugs it off, he relents and says that fine he wants to see her stupid room.
Chloe takes him up to the room, and he doesn't seem overly impressed. She lays on the bed as he notices photos of her friends. She begins to talk about feeling empty after her friends die and how no one in her family wants to openly discuss it with her. Ryan speaks about what they must have felt like. Clearly, he has some weird obsession with death. Chloe, touched by his empathy, kisses him and then begins to cry. Ryan consoles her and tells her he completely understands what she is going through.
The Presence who has been standing over their heads for a long time goes over to the closet and pulls down all the shelves. Chloe and Ryan are freaked out. Ryan assumes the dry wall isn't as strong to hold up all her stuff.
At dinner, Chloe brings up the Presence and how she feels something is haunting her. She thinks it may be Nadia. Tyler makes fun of her, after which, when Chris reprimands him, he storms to his room.
Rebekah is told to talk to him while Chris offers Chloe sympathy.
Chris is clearly at the end of his rope here. Prior to this, he had spoken to his lawyer friend about a hypothetical situation where a spouse may have committed fraud and how liable the uninvolved spouse may be.
He is in the living room when Tyler comes to talk to him, stating that Chloe refused his apology. He makes some more pompous remarks, and Chris tells him that he is an excellent man who is unfortunately deep inside him and needs to come out.
Later the Presence is watching the family sitting together as Tyler narrates how in the prank he got a girl to wear a dog t-shirt which was later posted online, though Tyler says it wasn't him who did that.
Chloe is busy picking her thumb until it is bloody while Chris is distressed to learn his son has been mean to a girl in school.
The Presence takes the stairs, and not straight away zooms up or teleports. It goes to Tyler's room and thrashes it.
The family comes upstairs and are shocked to see the flickering lights and things being thrown about.
They all get out of the house and regroup at the porch where they discuss their next steps.
Tyler taunts Chloe when she once again states that it is her friend Nadia and doesn't mean her any harm.
Chris calls up the realtor who refers him to her sister who has the second sight.
The sister, Lisa, appears with her husband Carl and as soon as she enters, she gasps as she bumps into the Presence.
She goes around the house but it is when she touches the mirror that she calls Chloe by her middle name. Then, she says she knows that Chloe has just lost someone very dear to her but that the Presence is someone who is very confused and wants to do something. She also states that the Presence doesn't know whether it is in the past or present, and the lines of time are a blur for it.
She does some more dramatics and Carl pulls Chris aside saying that when she is like this, she cannot go to work for two days. Chris understands and pays Carl. Rebekah is pissed that they let a con artist into the house and that money was given to her. She forbids anyone in the family entertaining Lisa again.
Later, Chris comes to see Chloe and tells her that he always believed she was a cool girl which is why he gave her the middle name Blue which his mother did not approve as she wanted a saint's name. He tells her he is very proud of her and that he believes in her. The two of them share a hug.
In the next scene, Chloe is being intimate with Ryan and the Presence sort of watches from the closet which is weird.
After that when Chloe goes to take a shower, Ryan goes downstairs to get orange juice and then mixes some powder into it.
Before Chloe can drink it, the table shakes and the juice falls everywhere.
Chloe invites Ryan over for the weekend when her parents will be travelling. Ryan promises to take care of Tyler.
The Presence then sees Lisa outside the window, talking to Chris about a dream she had where a window would not open. Chris dismisses her and she reluctantly leaves.
At night, the Presence tries to wake up Chloe but is unable to speak.
On the weekend, Chris tries to help Rebekah fix her problems at work. She already has a virus in her computer that doesn't allow her to do much work. Probably the Presence has something to do with that so that she doesn't continue the fraud.
They leave but only Chloe comes downstairs to say bye. Chris tells her no one is allowed in the house and she gives a not so innocent smile that Chris believes she is up to something.
After they leave, Ryan comes over and Tyler and him drink some grain liquor with orange juice. Ryan seems to love his orange juice because it probably masks the taste of whatever drug he puts into the drinks.
He gives Tyler Ambien which makes him fall asleep. Ryan then mixes a different drink for Chloe and takes it up to her.
She gets second thoughts however and tells him she doesn't want to do anything more with him.
PRESENCE Ending Spoilers
Ryan pretends to cry and say how he is all alone and eventually not a lot of people want anything to do with him. Chloe consoles him and agrees to his request to just talk. They gulp down their drinks and Chloe starts to feel the effects.
Ryan drags her around on the bed and then removes a roll of thin plastic wrap which he uses to cover her nose and mouth.
The Presence is unable to do anything to Ryan, so goes downstairs to wake up Tyler with flickering lights.
Tyler wakes up and searches for Chloe. He sees Ryan over him and shoves him hard enough that they both fall to their deaths.
Much later, the house is cleared of furniture and Chloe takes the last few things from the closet.
Rebekah is still depressed over Tyler's death. She goes towards the mirror and sees Tyler's reflection and breaks down.
When Chloe and Chris come to console her, she yells out that Tyler came back to save her.
It is then that we, the audience, realizes that it was never Chloe's friend Nadia who had come back for her but it was always Tyler who was the Presence.
The movie ends.
Final Thoughts on the Movie
Now that we know that Tyler was the Presence all along, we go back and connect the dots. So basically, Tyler was ashamed of the young man he was when he was alive including playing pranks on the girls at school, which is why he thrashed his own room. This was to show that in spite of the awards and medals, he was not a good person and after death he realizes all these things about himself.
Coupled with the fact, that he was mean to his sister.
The time loop part is a bit confusing. He becomes a ghost, then goes back in the past to wake himself up at the right moment so that he can push Ryan and himself put of the window? Was there a possibility he could have saved himself?
Probably not because then the loop would not have worked. He had to be a ghost in order to wake himself up to save his sister.
Then again, how did he die in the first place for him to become a ghost to give back....okay this is confusing.
The movie ends and that's that.
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