Lucy Liu in Steven Soderbergh's 'Presence'
(NEON)

Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan talk family and the haunting POV of ‘Presence’

This isn't your average ghost story.

NEON and director Steven Soderbergh’s genre-bending Presence is the latest addition to an already stacked month for horror movies, but it stands out among the rest for one obvious reason: it’s a haunted house story told from the point-of-view of a ghost.

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Steven Soderbergh might not be the first name that comes to mind when talking horror movies—a.k.a. the same guy who directed Magic Mike and Ocean’s Eleven—but he’s certainly making waves with his newest release, Presence. The film stars Julia Fox (yes, that Julia Fox), Lucy Liu, and Chris Sullivan, and follows a divided family as they move into a new house in the suburbs. After settling in, however, they start to realize that something is amiss.

As mentioned, part of what makes Presence so unique is that it flips your average haunted house story on its head by letting the audience see through the eyes of a ghost. This presented a unique set of challenges for the film’s cast, who essentially had to treat the camera like a scene partner—something Liu described as being at a dinner party and “sharing the same meal.”

Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan on subverting the classic poltergeist tale

The stars of Presence recently sat down with The Mary Sue to talk about the movie and shared what it was like to work with an omnipresent “ghost,” which, in reality, looked a whole lot like being chased around by a handheld camera. Shooting from the first-person perspective has been a common theme this year, with RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys using a very similar style. In the horror realm, found footage flicks like As Above, So Below and REC see our characters telling the story in real-time, but never has there been anything quite like Presence.

“It is not a way that we have ever worked before, and it is probably a way that we will never work again,” said Sullivan. “It took me a day of shooting to be like, ‘Okay, this is how this is going to work. Wow, this is going to be a challenge, Okay.’ So I had to reset everything I knew about working on a movie in order to shoot it in this style.”

Given that Presence explores themes of family and trauma, it was important to the cast to lean on each other as if they were an actual family unit while shooting. This meant having several conversations between the “parents” and their “children,” played by Callina Liang and Eddy Maday, to best capture this complex dynamic.

“I mean, we’re talking about a house in the beginning and that it’s perfect,” Liu explained. “The very very few couplets that were spoken about the house gave away what this relationship—where it was how much just disrepair it was in, and who was really wearing the pants in the family. And also it, in a very succinct way, showed [Rebecca’s] favoritism towards her son.”

Family is already complicated enough, but the addition of grief—and a ghostly sort of “roommate” who lives rent-free in their walls—puts Presence‘s characters in a seriously unenviable situation. All the best haunted house stories know how to strike a balance of heart and haunts, and in my eyes, Soderbergh has proven once and for all that he can jump between genres like a pro.

For those hoping to catch it on the big screen, Presence is now in cinemas.


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Amanda Landwehr
Amanda is a Los Angeles-based entertainment writer who lives and breathes Star Wars, Marvel, and all things pop culture. She has worked in digital media since 2021, covering the latest movie/TV releases, casting updates, politics, fan theories, and so, so much more. When she's not rotting away behind her laptop screen, you can typically catch Amanda maxing out her AMC Stubs membership.