A slow burn ghost story told from the perspective of the entity with no jump scares or even any scary scenes at all, but plays out like a typical haunted house horror, thanks to its audacious inverse format. When Steven Soderbergh experiments, something magical happens (usually). He understands the medium so well that it never feels half-formed. He sticks to his vision with precision, and it never comes off like a gimmick. In Presence, a somewhat thin story about a family who moves into a house where someone or something is gliding from room to room, observing them quietly, but mostly Chloe, the depressed daughter deeply affected by her friend’s recent alleged suicide, Soderbergh somehow makes it feel fresh and new, and never in a self-aware way. Just good old fashioned, smart filmmaking that shows there are always new ways of telling the same stories. 

…And that’s a wrap on TIFF this year.

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TIFF 2024
Day 10
Movie 27