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Presence film image; three people standing in doorway looking at one person in a room

Presence

Altered States

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Moving into their new home, the members of the Payne family are saddled with considerable baggage. With legal trouble already looming due to her workplace misconduct, Rebekah (Lucy Liu) is called out by her husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) for the overt favouritism she bestows on their competitive, callous son Tyler (Eddy Maday). Meanwhile, daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) is left to languish in solitude as she grieves a close friend’s overdose death and questions the intentions of a new admirer (West Mulholland). With tensions simmering and melancholy assuming a stranglehold, things start to go bump in the night…

In this, his inspired first foray into ghost stories, the ever-innovative Steven Soderbergh shoots every scene from the perspective of a spectral interloper. As the camera glides through hallways, sweeps down staircases, and floats into bedrooms, a viewer is consumed by the eerie sensation of being disembodied. And as we join this phantasm in surveilling the Paynes, we come to understand what truly haunts us…

 

Supported by

Media Partner

Director
Cast

Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland, Julia Fox

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

2024

Language

English

Film Contact
19+
85 min
Horror & Thriller Legendary Filmmakers
Extension 765

Book Tickets

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Credits & Director

Executive Producer

David Koepp, Corey Bayes

Producer

Julie Anderson, Ken Meyer

Screenwriter

David Koepp

Cinematography

Peter Andrews

Editor

Mary Ann Bernard

Original Music

Zack Ryan

Steven Soderbergh headshot; Presence director

Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, he gained recognition with his directorial debut, sex, lies, and videotape (1989), which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Later films include Kafka (1991), The Limey (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000) (Oscar, Best Director), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Solaris (2002), and Magic Mike (2012).

Filmography: sex, lies, and videotape (1989); Erin Brockovich (2000); Traffic (2000); The Informant! (2009); The Laundromat (2019).

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