The great success of 1999 Blair's witch's project He really made a number about the horror genre. It was not the first film with false footage, not even the first horror movie with footage found. But it arrived during a period in which portable cameras were getting smaller and more cheap, terror was becoming more popular and widespread, and internet -based marketing allowed creators to go to their ideal audience, effectively turning their film into their film A viral Creepypasta.
Between its enormous box office success and the apparent ease of duplicating it at a low price, Blair's witch's project He launched a fashion of terror with footage found that reached its maximum point and decreased over decades, and that still occasionally resurfaces into projects such as the 2023 underground sensation. PIEMLAMARINK. In the hypnotic and minimalist History of Ghosts of Steven Soderbergh PresenceHowever, it is possible that the footage style found found has found its final form.
Presence It focuses on an appearance on a luxuriously modernized centenary house, recently occupied by a family with problems and full of failures. The teenage daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) is recovering from the death of her best friend. His presumed and arrogant older brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) is not comprehensive; The family has just completely moved so that he can enter a better school district, where his stardom in the swimming team could take it further. His parents, Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) disagree on everything, particularly how to deal with Chloe's depression and her possible substance abuse, and how to moderate Rebekah's clear and absolute favoritism towards Tyler. While everyone is going through their own emotional tests, an invisible and intangible presence, represented by the camera, stalks by the house, watching them all even in their most private moments.
Technically speaking, Presence It is not really a footage found in the Blair Witch Project vein. It is not intended that the first person narrative of Soderbergh is real camera material, much less “lost” camera unearthed at some point after the camera operator suffered a terrible destination. But everything in the film develops within the visual style that became widely known as the terror of footage found: the public sees the entire film through the Soderbergh lens, which represents the only witness that connects all narrative threads.
In this case, however, the camera is not a nervous and dizzy portable device, as in Blair's witch's project, Clover fieldeither Behind the mask: Leslie Vernon's rise. It is not a series of sources such as security systems or static cameras, as in [REC] either Paranormal activity. It is a warmly illuminated and clearly made that moves throughout history, sliding around the house and the new inhabitants with an inhuman softness that transmits the strangeness of the entity. PresenceThe entire premise is that the story is framed by a ghostly voyeur that looms over the cast, assimilating its needs and fears, but initially unable to communicate its own.
The Soderbergh approach takes advantage of the idea of terror of the footage found of a story that is experienced by whoever is behind the camera, except that in this case, the question of who is behind the camera is part of the horror. From the beginning, Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp (who also wrote the single and efficient action thriller of Soderbergh 2022 Kimi) They imply that the presence is a ghost, but until the action develops completely, the public must wonder if it is something completely different, together with what you want and how and if it will eventually make its needs known. The filmmakers inevitably create some little shocks, but for the most part, Presence It is a discreet and slow curiosity instead of a terror on stalking.
For the public who expects impressive tricks of the usual horror manual of footage found (the type of barely glimmed threats and weakly enlightened shocks that allows a low fidelity and rapid movement camera), the Soderbergh approach may seem perverse. The luminous and open amplitude of the house and the richly decorated rooms make it look like an unlikely and even inappropriate space for a disturbing appearance. There is no possibility that the camera abruptly captures some unexpected and horrifying spectrum, because the camera is The spectrum.
While another story could have turned the imminent presence of the ghost and its intimate proximity with the characters into a constant spooky threat, PresenceThe ghost seems benign, even distanced. Like the lonely and face ghost of David Lowery. A ghost storyIt seems unable to affect the family or selfless. Until it is no longer.
Photo: Peter Andrews/The Spectral Spirit Company
But the uniqueness of that approach is part of the appeal. Presence It is more intellectual than visceral, more committed to asking questions than to immobilize viewers in their seats. Which makes it look like a more adult version of the film of footage found. Yeah Blair's Witch represented the slight adolescence of the subgenre, then format extensions such as Hostile And similar horror films were his experimental youth, and Presence It is its full adult form.
However, when growing, the genre has lost much of its surprising and attractive rawness and its energy verted. Presence It is quieter, sophisticated and polished than its predecessors of footage found, but it is also less emotionally attractive, despite its compromised actions and the raw and painful feelings of penalty, anger, resentment and loneliness that the central family is going through. When presenting their story in just 85 minutes, Soderbergh and Koepp do not give the premise or the format enough time to become predictable, but rarely give their history a sense of urgency or emotion. It is a horror of footage found as an intellectual exercise instead of an emotional thrilling.
All of which suggests Presence It is only one more in the endless line of cinematographic experiments with the soderbergh shape than a fashion launch phenomenon in the line of Blair's witch's project. This is the final stage of a subgenre that is still evolving, not the beginning of a new one. For Soderbergh, who has always been interested in innovating and bringing films to the next level, and then continuing, that is enough. However, for more immersed terror fans who expect a more familiar type of scare, Presence It may seem a strange iteration of a family trope, something that feels more adult and more unique than all those increasingly repetitive horror films with a house of past decades, but that is not yet so fun.
Presence It is already in theaters.