[Updated with Australia and New Zealand release dates]
Neon has unveiled the first trailer for Presence, Steven Soderbergh‘s highly anticipated venture into supernatural horror. The trailer teases a disturbing journey through a haunted house – a setting twisted by Soderbergh’s chosen cinematic POV: the ghost.
Starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, and Julia Fox, the film follows a family who moves into a suburban house, only to realise they aren’t alone. They soon become aware of an unsettling presence that watches their every move. This unseen entity, hovering with intent, seems especially fixated on Chloe, a teenage girl struggling for familial acceptance. Soderbergh has crafted this ghostly observer’s perspective to drive the narrative, with the entire story unfolding through its eyes. The screenplay was penned by David Koepp, the Jurassic Park scribe who previously collaborated with Soderbergh on Kimi.
The trailer’s eerie tone unfolds through an ominous exchange between two characters. A young man asks, “What’s it like?” The woman’s reply paints a haunting image: “It’s scary. And it goes on…Like, the world cracks apart. You fall into this hole, and the sides are mud, and you can’t get up. You wonder where they are. And you wonder what it would be like if you were there too.”
At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where Presence made its debut, a post-screening Q&A saw Soderbergh giving audiences a glimpse into the distinctive approach that defined his latest project. Known for his innovative techniques, Soderbergh explained how he took on the role of “ghost” in more ways than one by personally manning the camera for the supernatural thriller. Wearing martial arts slippers to stay as silent as possible, he navigated the set himself, often sliding around the New Jersey location to capture shots from the presence’s perspective. With a 14 mm lens, he embodied the ghostly observer.
Soderbergh noted that the film was shot within a three-week production schedule, attributing much of the work to a meticulous editing process. For Soderbergh, editing is where “it’s all happening.” He elaborated, as quoted by The Hollywood Reporter: “There’s no analogous sort of tasks in any other art form. You’re bringing it all together, all the elements. Sound, picture — it is the best. It’s the reward for being on set. The power of it still amazes me. How you can change the intention of something just by reordering shots or holding them at a certain length, pulling out lines, giving a line to somebody else.”
Soderbergh’s minimalist approach extended to his directing style. Liu described the experience as reminiscent of her early theatre days. “There was no extraneous direction,” she explained. “Theatre was my first love in that way, and it was like going back to that time again.” Co-star Chris Sullivan, who plays her husband, echoed her thoughts. “No one has ever shot a movie like this before,” he said, recalling how Soderbergh moved stealthily “up and down the stairs in martial arts slippers trying not to make any noise.”
Soderbergh’s Presence is set to hit U.S. cinemas on 24 January 2025. The film opens in Australia and New Zealand on 30 January 2025.
