IN THIS HOUSE THERE IS A PRESENCE.

As soon as the Payne family move into a new house, the daughter (Callina Liang), who’s mourning the loss of a friend, senses a strange presence.

The kind of ghost movie that critics appreciated but audiences not so much; perhaps the latter expected another Conjuring. What they got instead is a sort of thriller from the perspective of a specter. The opening scene sets the tone, as the camera moves anxiously from room to room in the dark, silent and empty house that will soon be the Payne’s new home. The presence soon learns that the daughter is in danger.

A tight, well-acted little film that makes you care for its characters, dead and alive.

2025-U.S. 85 min. Color. Directed, photographed and edited by Steven Soderbergh. Screenplay: David Koepp. Music: Zack Ryan. Cast: Lucy Liu (Rebekah Payne), Chris Sullivan (Chris Payne), Callina Liang (Chloe Payne), Eddy Maday (Tyler Payne), West Mulholland, Julia Fox.

Trivia: Co-executive produced by Koepp. 

Last word: “I generated just a few pages to describe the directorial approach. I described the lens at a certain height and that you felt that you were in some sort of point of view, but you were only able to intuit this by what the camera was choosing to look at and how it moved. I’d laid out there’s a real estate person [Julia Fox] that comes to get the house ready, and then this family comes in, there’s four of them, and that there’s some issue with the family. That’s all I had when I gave it to [screenwriter] David Koepp, and he read it and said, ‘I know exactly what to do with that.'” (Soderbergh, Indiewire)