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Review - Presence
12 Plays2 months ago
My thoughts on the new film, Presence! I didn't love it, but there is something to be said about the amazing technical work to make this movie. The plot? Not as scary or different than I wanted it to be.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Movie Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
um We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you some breaking news. There's been reports all over the area of something crazy going on, something big. People's homes, their minds even, are being taken over by something called, what is it they're calling it? They're calling it Bad Movie Debate! What up nerds, it's me Jacob Bad from Bad Movie Debate here to do a quick little review about Presence, the new Steven Soderbergh horror movie, drama movie,
00:00:30
Speaker
thriller movie, I don't know, it's billed as a ah horror movie. I'd say it's more of an intense drama, but you know, that's neither here or there at this point. We'll get into it.
Review of 'Presence' Ratings
00:00:40
Speaker
Spoilers ahead for sure. ah But first and foremost, as always, as I we'll always try to do at least, 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, certified fresh, loved it.
00:00:52
Speaker
53% on the popcorn meter. Audience is not so much, which is fair I think. 6.7 on IMDB, so mid as always on IMDB. 77% Metacritic and 6.7 for their users over there. um Yeah, so...
00:01:13
Speaker
Critics really seem to like it, audiences not as much, and I can understand why to an extent. I just think that...
00:01:25
Speaker
Well, we'll get into all
Cinematography Praise
00:01:26
Speaker
that. First and foremost, the cinematography, the POV shots of the ghosts walking around and going up the stairs and down the stairs and the way it swings around as the ghost like gets back into the closet to like hide even though no one can actually see it um are remarkable. They're really, really good.
00:01:44
Speaker
um There's no arguing that, there's absolutely no doubt about that. that And I think I had seen that Steven Soderbergh actually like operated the camera himself so he could get the exact like feel and everything that he wanted ah while you know being this first person like looking through the eyes of this ah presence, as it were.
00:02:05
Speaker
and absolutely absolutely nailed that. There's no argument about that. you can't You just can't argue it at all. You can't say anything bad about it. um so like I don't want to use the expression and achievement of filmmaking. It is highly impressive, ah the coordination between Soderbergh is the director and camera operator and all of the actors and the crew and everything like working together to Get these scenes which some of them are decently long um And have a decent amount of camera movement as the ghost is doing this and that and the other um so like and you know that so that has to be all one take and everything and
00:02:51
Speaker
That's always pretty impressive in my mind. um i I love that
Is 'Presence' Really a Horror Film?
00:02:56
Speaker
kind of stuff. I think it really works and I think it just really shows how good you're actoring the are your actors, your direction, your camera people, you every like your crew, all the way down to the PAs.
00:03:10
Speaker
You all have to be in sync, and like I think that's just a really cool thing to see when it's pulled off well. And I think this did a good job of doing that, and it got the results that it wanted. So kudos to everybody on that set, Soderbergh down to, again, whatever PAs are out there. Shout out PAs. Movies can't be made without you.
00:03:30
Speaker
but um Yeah, I don't know man. It just, I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. I think part of it is the marketing around that it's a horror movie. Now they didn't, don't get me wrong, they didn't do the long legs thing like a lot of horror movies do, which I love long legs. Don't get me your wrong. Don't come for me on that. But long legs included there's a lot of horror movies that have been marketing themselves as like the scariest movie ever like the new scariest in like every movie is the new horror movies the new scariest movie ever and like that brings a little bit of a disappointment because like while i love long legs it was more intense and uncomfortable than it was like horrifying if that makes sense but i have me and jonathan who's been on like we have a whole episode talking about long legs and the ups and downs of that but that's to say this movie
00:04:23
Speaker
marketed it itself as a horror movie it didn't say it's the scariest movie ever or anything like that so that's good in my mind but I didn't find it scary in the traditional sense of like what a horror movie would you know like you would think a horror movie would do right like it was horrifying things happen absolutely there's no doubt about that the end of the movie like the climax of the movie is pretty intense and is gonna make a lot of people pretty uncomfortable it's you know it's SA you know like there's some very close to that if not full blown that it's it's not good ah in that regard like it's a very so trigger warning for that um if you haven't heard
00:05:12
Speaker
that is in there during the climax and so just be prepared but regardless the story itself just wasn't that just wasn't that interesting or too different from other type of movies you know what i mean the most interesting thing about it is that it's a ghost perspective and they're the ones they're our main character they're the one like where the person we're seeing everything like from, like we only know what the ghost knows, the presence knows.
Family Dynamics and Haunted House
00:05:46
Speaker
Again, which is cool, but the story is more or less, ah again, massive spoilers um if you haven't seen it, so sorry, but it's the only way I can talk about it. um
00:05:59
Speaker
the this family moves into a new house where this ghost is and you get little nuggets of information like apparently the son was a real I mean he obviously is a real piece of shit you can see that like throughout the movie until the end he does one thing good even if it kinda doesn't work out, but regardless. um Son's a piece of shit, he did some kinda shit at his other school, got in trouble in some kinda big way. And Lucy Liu, who's incredible in this movie because she made me hate her, which is shocking, because Lucy Liu is amazing and I always love her. I did not love her in this movie, or her character rather. I love her, hated her character, which means she was great. Again, all the acting was great, so like,
00:06:45
Speaker
He's got to be a great actor at this point to do anything, honestly, ah and have people talk about it at length. but um and She's trying to like keep the son safe so they move so he can go to a different school. The daughter has had two friends OD that she knew, or like people she knew OD, and so she's having a really hard time.
00:07:07
Speaker
and the dad is trying to balance his wife, Lucy Liu, trying to do some sort of like, she's doing some kind of weird shady shit that we never really get full answers on, which normally not getting full answers on something like that would really bother the hell out of me, but again we only know what the ghost knows and the ghost doesn't hear every single conversation or the conversations it does here doesn't they don't explicitly say what they're doing or like what she's doing and he's trying to like kinda help her navigate through where he can at least not go down for it if not both of them come out scot-free and so that's fine but we don't get those answers in that uh... and the dad just he's trying to make his daughter happy make his son less of a dick and
00:07:54
Speaker
make his wife and like keep his wife from going to prison it sounds like again don't know what's going on with that but again that's not really the point um he meets the son meets a new guy a guy at school he becomes friends with he's like super popular whatever and him and the daughter start doing their thing wink wink um behind everybody's back uh... obviously she's not gonna tell her fucking parents about it probably but behind the her brother's back like they don't know and stuff and they start like doing drugs together and like at that point you're like okay so seems kinda obvious what's gonna happen right right like i feel like i don't even have to say it but i'm going to uh... he
00:08:45
Speaker
the friend i'm super bad with names in movies i've only seen one time so apologies uh... but the friend he uh... he's trying to make these girls like he's the one going around killing these girls by over like drugging them taking advantage of them and then people just write it off as like an OD kind of a thing so he's like a budding serial killer like like a teenage silly serial killer kind of a thing which is you know I don't know it's just like that story was very obvious but it is interesting to see the ghost come in and um
00:09:31
Speaker
it is interesting to see the ghost come in and be the one to see this like the ghost stops the like OD a couple of times like she like he put some OJ or he put some drugs in that like fentanyl and the I think he was fentanyl whatever he puts that in some OJ and swirls it up and puts it on the nightstand and the ghost like shakes the nightstand so it falls over and spills
Ghost Intervention and Overdose
00:09:57
Speaker
so it doesn't happen. And then at the end, um he drugs the brother to knock him out, not to kill him, but to just knock him out to get him out of the way but so he can go do, he can go kill OD, the other girl, like the daughter, and do all that fucked up shit. And the ghost comes and is able to like, wake this the brother up so he can go up there and save him, or save her rather. And
00:10:21
Speaker
So like it's cool in that regard and you know there's a lot of things you can discuss about belief like the daughter obviously she thinks it's her best because was one of the ah girls who died was one of her if not her best friend and um and so she's obviously super not well because of everything like that but she feels like the presence is her friend and her dad doesn't like her mom and her brother like you're moron this is stupid we don't believe you um even after they do see stuff happen they're like like all this crazy shit happens in the brother's room because he's telling a story about he is bullying the shit out of this girl at school for no reason which is
00:11:08
Speaker
Insane and the mom's just eating it up. It's very weird honestly how much the mom is into the son and the dad's just like I kind of fucking hate all of you except for my daughter, which is yeah, but They all see they all foresee some shit happen and discuss it But then they go right back to being like not fuck this fuck that they bring in a medium She says some shit and the mom and the brother are like fuck this fuck that but the dad and the daughter are they like she believes fully he believes her because they've seen some stuff he's into the medium thing he grew up in a really religious house household he said he had shunted it off but now he kind of understands belief a little bit more and like stuff like that and
00:11:52
Speaker
you know so there's like there's elements of that in there and like the distance the difference between like belief and non-belief and like becoming a believer and stuff like the daughter is a full-blown believer the son never quite makes it there because to save his sister he grabs the friend and they fall out of the second story window and they die. They both die and like when they hit the ground.
Belief vs. Non-belief in the Film
00:12:15
Speaker
And so Lucy Liu ends up becoming a believer because she, at the end, we're seeing the ghost thing, but then she looks in the old mirror and she sees her son's reflection and like that's who the POV is now. so it's like
00:12:32
Speaker
So now he's haunting the house instead of the other one. Or maybe they both are like, again, there's not a lot of answers, but that's fine. But she has a mental breakdown freaking out saying she sees him and stuff. And so like, she kind of gets it. So I don't really know exactly what, again, this is listed like on AMC. It says listed as an artisan film, which usually means they're a little more uppity, you know, elevated. If you want to use that word.
00:13:00
Speaker
uh for whatever reason and so usually that means there's you know there's stuff you can dig out of it like look at deeper and stuff and like i just don't really think i got anything out of it deeper i probably need to watch it again to get like more of a like more of a sense of like what the deeper thing that is going on is because there's definitely something there and I feel like it has to do again like I said like there's is a belief religious kind of thing going on and like the two factions of like mom and son and dad and daughter and like first group doesn't believe those two do believe kind of a thing and
00:13:46
Speaker
i just don't so i mean there's that and because you got the whole medium thing and she does her thing and he like gives them some money for their time and the mom gets all mad being like that's complete horseit and everything um did the whole thing with the mom and her criminal activity. there's She's clearly doing something criminal. Again, don't get any solid answers on that, but it is what it is. It's not the point of the movie, so I get why we don't really, like, fuck with it. But, regardless, I do you just think it's interesting, like, that that whole thing is kind of going on, because it didn't really change anything, except for the, but I mean, I guess you could say it, like, it shows that the mom will do anything
00:14:34
Speaker
will work hard for anything she cares about, but she doesn't seem to care about her daughter. She cares about doing these crimes, she cares about making her son cool, but she like doesn't really fuck with the daughter and thinks she needs to just get over it and let time, po time will pass and everything will be fine and stuff, while the dad's like, we have to talk to her, we have to make sure she's okay, we have to like get her help and like do whatever we can and
Unresolved Criminal Subplot
00:14:57
Speaker
stuff. so I don't know, see, like that just feels like a digression from what I was trying to say. like I have no idea what,
00:15:03
Speaker
I feel like this could be on a deeper level, but there's there's something there. I just haven't personally figured it out yet, but I'm not gonna go see this movie again in theaters probably, um which is unfortunate. um I don't know, maybe if I go see it again and I can pinpoint what that is, or if somebody could tell me what they got from it, because I didn't read anything that said, oh, it's this or that. I try not to do that before I do this. I'll read something after and maybe it'll change my perspective.
00:15:32
Speaker
But I like to do my reviews just coming from me and get what I can out of them. I'll read a little bit of stuff about how the movie was made or something. Like I said, I saw that Steven Soderbergh did the camera operation, which is amazing again. um Yeah, I don't know. I just didn't really get a whole lot out of it.
00:15:52
Speaker
on a deeper level, even though I know something has, i again, artists in film, according to AMC, so something has to be there that I'm just not seeing. And maybe, you know, after this, I'll like read some reviews and maybe that'll change my mind. But I mean, by that point, it'll be too late, because I'll have already put this out, but I don't want to spew anything that somebody else has already said as if it was my own. So, because that's just not cool. um Yeah, I don't know. ah I'm gonna give it a... ah I'm probably gonna give it like a 6.5 out of 7 because the camera work and just like all the like technical filmmaking stuff is incredible. It's an achievement of film if you want to
Horror or Gothic Drama?
00:16:39
Speaker
say it like that. I don't know if I want to, like I said, but I think it's it's definitely worth watching because it is really, really well made. The story
00:16:50
Speaker
was pretty obvious. It's a story we've seen before. It's a story we've read before. you know like It's just a done story just from a different perspective. and like that's wild cool I still wanted some more like twists and turns and stuff like that as far as it being a horror movie no not really I mean what the kid what the friend is doing is horrific and absolutely terrifying and really fucked up don't get me wrong but even in those moments technically speaking filmmaking wise like they're disturbing but
00:17:31
Speaker
The entire rest of the movie just didn't feel... just didn't feel like a horror movie. Again, a very intense drama that I think is very well done and worth a watch. But I think a little bit of my disappointment comes from I was like, oh yeah, it's gonna be like scary and like creepy and stuff. And it just, it wasn't that. and But again, there's nothing wrong with that. Like, Parasite, like, I don't think that's a horror movie. I think that's...
00:17:55
Speaker
just of like a really heavy drama like thriller or something like this is a bit of a thriller in in some senses and stuff but like I feel like I feel like it's yeah more of like a like almost like a gothic kind of drama because like the ghost is like has is a character and like we don't know any wet know anything about her really but like her I mean we kind of figure out that it's probably a woman but um like she obviously has a agenda and stuff like that she's not just there to horrify and scare and like anything like that like there's an agenda and some thoughts and opinions like she loves the daughter wants to keep her safe she hates the fucking son because he's a dick and everything so I mean like there's a little bit of that in there which I love and I think it's great but I again I just think that the way it was like advertised as like a horror movie and stuff kinda
00:18:51
Speaker
Mess with my brain, so I didn't really go in with the right
Final Thoughts and Ratings
00:18:55
Speaker
mindset. I guess is the best way to say it so yeah 6.5 There's a deeper meaning. I haven't figured it out yet without reading somebody else's thoughts on it which again. I don't want to do right now. I like to figure it out myself and then share and then read and see what other other people are thinking but I Don't know I don't know on this one so Yep, let me know what y'all think um Follow everywhere you, you know, you heard this, so I guess you're already following, but follow on Instagram and TikTok and all that good stuff too. um Peace.