Presence

Though a new Steven Soderbergh movie is cause for celebration and it’s laudable that the director/cinematographer/editor keeps trying new things, not all of his experiments are successful.

Joining such failures as The Good German and The Girlfriend Experience is Presence, a high-concept horror film that never quite lives up to its intriguing premise. Indeed, “a ghost story told from the ghost’s perspective” — particularly one shot by Soderbergh — sounds like pure cinematic catnip, but from the jump it’s clear viewers are in trouble.

Shot on a Sony Alpha 9 III camera with a small stabilization rig, the concept allows the filmmaker (under his Peter Andrews cinematographer alias) to glide through a suburban home from this spectral vantage point, hovering near the unsuspecting new residents and hiding in closets, seemingly ready to pounce (or at least make itself known) at any moment.

But no, this phantasm prefers to watch — bland inactivity that sucks the air out of Presence’s overlong 85 minutes early and often. And when it’s in motion, inducing nausea by whipping through the residence and swooping up and down the stairs, one wishes it was merely hanging around teens Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday) and their parents Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan, Toby from This Is Us).

So, yes, the visual gimmick is a bit of a bust, but its possibilities are severely hampered by the script from legendary screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park; Mission: Impossible), who seems to be working from an outline he sketched on a waterlogged cocktail napkin.

His plot takes forever to kick in and features a dearth of spectral activity, suggesting he and Soderbergh assume the mere presence of this presence offers sufficient chills. In turn, the entity’s “boundary crossing” provides the film’s few pulse-quickening moments, though the director (in his capacity as editor Mary Ann Barnard) ultimately proves to be the chief offender through his excessive fades to black that disrupt any chance of narrative flow.

These abrupt cuts likewise prohibit character development, though Koepp barely tries in this department. The somewhat compelling notion that Chloe has a spiritual connection to a friend who overdosed and is communing with her in the family’s new house soon grows stale, especially since the phantom behaves more like a small child than a teen. And side dramas involving Rebekah’s professional misdeeds, Tyler’s competitive swimming skills, and Chris’ frustrations with his son are so inconsequential they may as well not be included.

These thinly formed elements build to a laughable climactic revelation that marks a new low point in Soderbergh’s filmography, and while the ultimate reveal is somewhat poignant, it’s not enough to save this snoozy misfire.

Grade: C-minus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo by Peter Andrews)