Pop Culture Happy Hour - Presence

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

In the new Steven Soderbergh film Presence, a family moves into an old house, and weird stuff starts happening. But what's different about this haunted house story is that the movie told from the point of view of the ghost. We only get glimpses of the family, but gradually we start to piece together their brittle dynamic.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

In the new Steven Soderberg film Presence, a family moves into an old house and weird stuff starts happening. That is a pretty standard haunted house story on paper. But what's different here is that we're the ones haunting the house in question, because this is a ghost story told from the point of view of the ghost. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about presence on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today as writer and critic, Walter Chow. Welcome back, Walter. Thanks for having me. Of course. Let's get to it. In presence, we are a ghost roaming an empty old house when a new family moves in.

We watch them, the mother played by Lucy Lou, the dad played by Chris Sullivan, the son played by Eddie Mayday, and the quiet, introspective daughter, played by Kalina Leang. We only get glimpses of this family, but gradually we start to piece together their brittle dynamic. Mom is driven and hard-edged. Dad is feckless and soft. and the son's a jock bully who's befriended the popular boy in school played by West Mulholland. West Mulholland. The wonderfully named West Mulholland. But for some reason, we take a particular interest in the daughter Chloe, who is dealing with recent death of a friend. The precise nature of that interest, is it threatening?

Is it protective? Is it something else? Is one of the mysteries at the heart of presence, which is in theaters now? Linda, kick us off. Would you make a presence? I really liked this. To me, it was all vibes. Like, the script is fine. I enjoyed the story.

But what I really liked about this movie is the way that it's made, the way that it's shot. And when you said, we are the ghost, I just want to clarify, like, what that means in this case is it's all POV stuff. So this presence that they're all afraid of is the eyes that you're looking out of. You see through this presence's eyes as it kind of moves through the house or looks out the windows. And I did find that sort of interesting. There's also some interesting work with lenses here that just makes the picture a little, to me, a little bit more off kilter. And I also really liked how it is scored, which is to say large parts of it are not scored. You do have a lot of quiet.

And essentially, it's like a series of little scenes, but each section is one shot. And then at the end of that little piece, which might be anything from a few seconds to longer than that, it goes hard to black and then it picks up again. One of the things this reminded me of was Blair Witch a little bit what I liked about the Blair Witch Project when I first saw it ages and ages and ages ago before four gazillion found footage horror movies. I liked the fact that it had that feeling of actually being a little more lived in. Okay, maybe you and me talk later. At first I just sensed it and then things moved. Moved? Yes.

What things? A lot of things. I saw it. You saw it. You saw things moved. I saw the aftermath. So, listen, is the story here, you know, like completely amazing? Maybe not.

But I very much enjoyed being in the presence of, I don't even know if I would call it a horror movie. I think it's a scary movie. I think it's an unsettling movie. So, yeah. So you're going to be. on vibes. Walter, how with the vibes for you? I agree with everything on the sad. You know, I was really into it initially.

I was like, this is a great experiment from one of our great kind of experimenters. I really think Soderberg is fascinated with film language and how to manipulate it, right? I mean, he's so good at it. He's so brilliant. As a horror movie fanatic, I don't feel a real love of the genre from him.

Right. Just that the script is so quotidian. It's so, like, really dull. I thought. So the style, this really brilliant sort of approach to it, I think, was in the service of something that wasn't interesting to the point of actually turning me against the film ultimately. And I'm thinking of another movie that kind of makes really interesting use of the POV thing, Nickel Boys. Yes, I thought about that too. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting that they're both coming out in such close proximity with each other. And I wonder if that's a cultural thing or if it's a technological thing. Like we're thinking about VR. And we're thinking about, you know, how do we begin to tell stories in a different way? Maybe presence becomes a more interesting film in many ways, you know, than a fully successful film in whatever genre it's attempting. But I always appreciate Soderberg's experiments, let's say.

You know, I think I heard a little bit of that from Linda, although you liked it more than I did. But I think we can't agree that it's really you ought to see it. It's interesting, you know. You know, when you reference Blair Witch, I love that. I think Blair Witch is one of the most influential, perhaps the most influential modern horror film, just because of what you said. You know, there's 10 billion movies that try to do with a dead. Probably will be true of presence and nickel boys as well that more people will begin to experiment with point of view in films.

And that makes sense to me. It reminded me of when I was a kid and I used to play those old infocom games. But, you know, it feels like that where you're walking north, south, you know, west, left. And you hear conversations and you move in and out. And that's what the film kind of feels like. And those are the best moments for me when it's like, okay, you're developing a different vocabulary here. You're developing a new way to tell stories here. And it reminds me of ancient technology in a strange way.

But yeah, you know, I think it's a good experiment, but maybe a failed film. Okay. That's interesting. I hear what you're both saying. I come down, I don't know, somewhere in the middle, maybe. I know what I'm about to say is going to sound pretentious, but I don't care anymore because that ship is sailed. I made my peace with that. But in the early going of this film, it seemed like it was a different movie than it becomes.

It seemed like it was a lot more character study of this family, more esoteric, more, frankly, art-housy, more in line with what I think is a very similar film, a ghost story by David Lowry. That's when I was really getting into it. I was getting a portrait of this family. It was incomplete, and I liked how incomplete it was because it felt like it was realistically incomplete. And that made me think about, why are we getting these scenes and not these other scenes? And, like, what is the connection? Why is there some kind of emotional through line or psychological through line? Then the film starts to drop these big, narratively driven hints.

And when it resolves in a kind of, I would say, pulpy genre way, and look, this is me talking. I love genre. But, like, I felt like the contract I had signed with this film was to get something kind of elusive and esotive. and esoteric and appealing to what my dad used to call my artsy-fartziness. And it kind of resolved into something which, this is the problem we're all having. Is it more thriller territory? Yeah. I couldn't quite pinpoint.

So I was sort of poking around about this movie because, as I said, I loved the way it was directed and shot. I was less enthralled with the script. And the script is by David Kep. And when I saw that name, I was like, that does not mean a whole lot to me. I'm sure it does to other people. But if you do not know who David Kep is, David Kep either wrote or co-wrote, let me give you a partial list. Death Becomes Her, Jurassic Park, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible, Panic Room, the 2002 Spider-Man, War of the Worlds. He directed Mordecai, okay?

The thing about this guy is my reaction to that list. is journeyman, right? Sure. In the truest sense, a guy who knows how to write movies that get made and in many cases, although not all cases, make money. Some are really well regarded, at least up to a, like Panic Room, I think is a great movie. I think it's really interesting that he wrote Panic Room. That's the one that made me think, oh, interesting.

And it's fascinating to me that I think this script is serviceable. Do you know what I mean? And I think it is not much more or less than serviceable. I don't think it's great. But I think it is a frame on which Soderberg is able to hang a lot of visual experimenting that I did like. I did like at the first moment I was like, oh, wait, we're the thing because we're hiding in the closet, right? And I was like, yeah, this is sort of cool. I did think there was a little more maybe to the family story than you did, Glenn.

I think this idea that there are these two diads where kind of the father and the daughter are aligned and the mother and the son are aligned is a kind of a complicated dynamic. I did feel it veering into the same, like, as you kind of mentioned in the intro, you know, mom is hard charging and dad is soft and cares about the kids, which is also what we ran into with Wolfman, which I didn't think they went anywhere with. It's an interesting kind of shift. So, like, I'm not convinced that I like the script, but I think the script is, like, fine. Well, I love that you use the term serviceable, Linda. I love that you say that because I think it's audience service. It makes itself a puzzle box when I think it's not necessary. We don't have to have all of the pieces put together for us.

Because there is an answer eventually to why this is. ghost is there and what the ghost's origins are. And it's interesting to contemplate, like, did they really need that? Or could it just have been the house has a ghost? Yeah. To Glenn's point, you don't need to, please don't tie all the strings together. Yeah. Things don't have to be so related to one another, you know, all the time.

And that's why I'm willing to give this film some benefit of the doubt because, I mean, it starts with a mystery. It starts with questions. We eventually get the answer. Answers are always less intriguing than mysteries. Answers are always a lot less fun. So, but to that point, though, it starts with. I went into this hoping it to be a different kind of artsy-fartsy-fartsy-er film than it turns out to be, but plenty of folks are going to go into this film, given the marketing, given the title,

expecting it to scratch that horror thriller itch that it eventually does, but boy, it takes a long time to do that. So are they going to come out of this film as kind of weirdly unsatisfied as I was? I think so. I don't think that it actually does very well as a horror film either. It's very conventional. And, you know, it's very David Cap. You know, there are exceptions to Linda's point. And Panic Room actually is very close to me analog to this movie.

You know, the way that the camera moves, right? And Panic Room is revolutionary for its time, you know, for all time. And it goes through walls. It goes up and down. And it's Fincher, who, of course, is also really experimental with camera. Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And this idea of the camera being not omniscient necessarily, but omnipresent, like able to move through the window in Citizen Kane or whatever. You're going through. solid objects. And there's actually something very old about all of this stuff. You know, even the script, I have, I frankly have issues with the mother being Asian and being that stereotype of a dragon lady who's very interested in academics. I was worrying I was being predictably NPR over here, wringing my hands, worrying if the film is casting the Lucy Lou character as a kind of stereotypical tiger bomb. So talk, say more. Yeah. And I know that you asked me to

be on before any of us had seen it. Yeah. So I'm not taking it that way, but I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, not me again. Not me having to say this again. But there's Lucy Lou, who's great. I adore. And, you know, I adore her mostly in that show, elementary, where she plays Watson. She's brilliant doctor and she's an equal to show. Anyway, she in this movie is, she wants them move in the house just because it's in the right school district. She cares about the sun more because Asians, you know, number one son. She kind of overlooks the shortcomings. You know, the family dynamics that were presented are the rotten core of the serviceable. Apple. Yeah, I get that. What is missing here? You know, are we missing the gay best friend who's funny? Yep. Are we missing the black friend who dies first?

What are we missing here in the list of white guys writing a movie with diversity? And it probably begins with good intentions. It's like, let's be a family. You know, you know, really good for this is Lucy Lou. Yeah, let's put her. You know, it would be totally different if it was Julie Garner. Sure. It would totally be different if it was a white woman.

But, you know, if it's a Desi woman, if it's a black woman, if it's a Chinese woman, These things are different now. And you've got to be really so careful. Right, right. The thing about it is, as you just said, it would be different if it was Julia Garner. And as I said, I just watched this done with Julia Garner and didn't like it. And it sort of had a somewhat similar, you know, mom can't emotionally connect with the kids. If they were to say, oh, no, but when we wrote it, we didn't know who it was going to be.

It doesn't matter. Because it's like you say, you cannot opt out of context. it's just a matter of you have to look at, you know, Glenn has said many times, I'm not interested in the thing you thought you made, I'm interested in the thing you actually made. And you have to be able to gain that perspective and say, when I look at this, in this context, that we all have to acknowledge exists, I may not have made the thing I thought I was making because I didn't cast Julia Garner. And you don't want to make that a sort of like a peril of casting anybody who's not. a white woman. Like, it's not that. It's just that maybe it would have done to, like, once you cast Lucy Lou, maybe there are ways to reconfigure the story, because I don't think it needs the stuff about the school district. And I don't understand, like, I don't think any of that is critical to the story at all. I will say from a very simple perspective, I was really happy to see her in, like, a high profile project. But I can't argue with anything that you're saying,

certainly about the way that she's deployed in this. I totally agree about Lucy Lou. I want to see her in lots of stuff, but I want to see her as smart and reasonable. And, you know, why is it the only time I get to see Lucy Lou in a major production is she knows martial arts or she's a dragon lady? Why is that? And that's painful a little bit to see an opportunity lost maybe.

It's like, you know, I don't want to feel like, I don't want to seem as though I'm, my bloomers are all in a kerfuffle. over this. No, no, no, no. I just feel like it's a little bit easy. Yeah. You didn't think it through. You didn't think he had to.

You know, you were focused on this other stuff and he didn't think this mattered, but it does matter. Yeah, absolutely it does. And the other thing is that details like that are inessential to what's going on in this film in a way that, at first it was kind of intriguing where we get a lot of things that are kind of hanging out along the edges of this film. And when they start to resolve, it feels a little pat.

It feels a little tied up. But going back to the approach here. Now, this film is 85 minutes long. And you both mentioned this. Sotoberg has talked in the past about how he doesn't think historically that POV narrative films work because he says, we always want to see the reverse shot. We always want to see, if we're the character that's looking around, we want to see how our character is reacting to what's happening. And we're always waiting to get that reverse shot. And the limitation of a POV is you never get it.

And then he said, with respect to this film, I think it works here. I hope it works here because we can't get a reverse shot because we're a ghost. If we did turn the camera around, we wouldn't see anything. So that kind of feels like it kind of obviates that. But I do think he's right that POV works in small batches when there isn't much time for us to kind of chafe against the fact that our gaze is being so explicitly directed, right? Because when you watch a film, your gaze is being directed anyway, but it's a passive project. And when you do POV, though, there is this illusion of volition. There's this illusion that we're the ones turning our head and looking at a thing X, Y, and Z.

And the less opportunity you give an audience to say, that's not what I would be looking at. That's not the conversation I would be eavesdropping on. The less opportunity you give them to do that, I think the more effective it is. So I think the 85 minutes works to this film's favor. I think that's true. I thought it was skillful the way that the ghost takes on a certain. character because you can sort of see how when the ghost is nervous and when the ghost is upset and when the ghost is sort of concerned in a way just from the way the camera's used.

I admire that. I think that's really cool. It's interesting. It's a real strong and getting stronger as I think about it. Difference between how I feel about the writing and how I feel about the directing and cinematography. Yeah. You know, I still agree about the running time that I think it would be kind of effective as a short film. You know, if we're doing like a 10-minute thing, that's really interesting, and that's almost enough.

When you watch some experimental cinema, it's like, you know, stamp rackage used to put, like, moth wings on exposed film. And it's much more interesting to talk about than it is to watch. So, you know, I think maybe that, you know, the shorter, the better, it's really a smart idea. Just, you know, trying to give it this resolution, they're trying to pack it into a genre is the mistake. You know, I don't want people to misunderstand that. I need this to be horror. I need to understand what opposite. it, you know, kind of to what you're saying, Glenn, it's like, I want it to be unidentifiable.

I want it to be amorphous, you know, like ghost story is. Is that a romance? Is that a horror film? Is that, no, I don't know. It's about grief, I guess. It's about loneliness, right? It is revolutionary technically, but, you know, this actually reminds me of a movie from 1947 called Lady in the Lake.

Yep. But, you know, it's a Philo-Marlo movie, directed and starring Robert Montgomery, and it's all done in first person. You never get to see Marlo in the course of that film. he's the camera. I am the camera, right? And so we've been in this ground before. So really what's appealing is new technologies and this digital ability.

And he says that he used martial arts footwear or something to sneak around the house, which also is pinging with me a little bit with the kind of like, we're not all stealthy, Stephen. Anyway, I applaud. Even in the right footwear. But for the thing that it's filming to be so old, so elderly and creaky. It's like,

here, it's scary. Kids aren't the scariest, Sue. You know, what's the scariest right now? It's fentanyl. You know, something. Something crazy. Rip it from the headline, Stephen. You go, David.

And I feel like there's a real lack of care in that. There's like a real, I think, datedness to this, the sell-by date for the script past decades ago. And at this moment, it's so stark the difference between the technology used to film it and what's actually been filmed. The best is when there's vibes and the worst is when you actually think about what the story is, which is, oh, no, no.

There is also the context of previous Soderberg films and this experience of watching a Soderberg film and being like, that's a great approach, that's a great technique. I'm not sure if the story works, like time code, for example. Great approach, great technique. I'm not sure the story works. I mean, that's not the first time. So there's in the Hollywood datedness here,

and there's also a kind of director repeating themselves kind of datedness here. But we want to know what you think about presence. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash p-c-h-h-h and on letterboxed, no e, at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show, Walter Chow. Linda Holmes, thank you so much for being here. So happy to be here.

Thank you, Glenn. I would never haunt you. I would haunt the heck out of you. I don't want either things. This episode was produced by Liz Metzker and Leonard Sherburn and edited by Mike Katziff. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. And hello, come in, provides our theme music.

Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.