The Review: Presence

 

Presence 8/10

Full of spoilers. L called and said she saw the first ten minutes of this on Hulu and thought I'd be interested. I was. This movie starts off with just a camera walking all around this house. Turns out that it is a ghost. The family arrives, Chris, Rebekah, and their teen children Tyler and Chloe. Whoever wrote this definitely hangs around or knows teens because they had their dialogue down. When they arrive Chloe seems to look right at the ghost who retreats to a closet. Chloe just walks around looking at the place and unknowingly being watched. They end up getting the house and while the workers are there one of them refuses to enter one of the rooms.

There is some shady business going on with the mother Rebekah as the ghost watches what she is doing. She talks with Tyler and has the strangest damn relationship with him. I thought they may have been romantically linked or some strange shit. Chloe is in her room crying and seems to sense the ghost. She tells everyone about this and says it may be her dead friend. Turns out her friend OD'd recently and Chloe is on medications. Her mom doesn't give a damn about her. Tyler meets a new friend, Ryan. He tells Chloe to keep her crazy shit in check because Ryan is popular. Ryan has a father that works in pharmaceuticals so Ryan has all the drugs. The ghost closes the door while Tyler and Ryan talk. Meanwhile Chris is talking to a legal friend wondering if he could go to jail for something his wife is doing.

Chloe and Ryan start trauma bonding after having edibles and when they start getting hot and heavy the ghost yanks down the closet shelf. L and I were like “Thank god!” At dinner Tyler shits on Chloe some more and Chris defends her saying she had her friend die and another girl just died. Tyler says they were just dumb drug addicts. Tyler talks about a photo of a girl that they pranked and the photo pops up on Chloe's phone and they start arguing. Next thing you know the family hears a ruckus and Tyler's room is being wrecked by the ghost. I was so glad that the entire family got to see this and this wasn't something only Chloe would witness. The family is outside trying to figure out what to do while Chloe is like “See?!” This lady Lisa gets called by Chris who is psychic or something. She comes in and “sees” the ghost immediately. She says that the ghost seems lost. Rebekah is mad that Chris paid money for the lady to come. Its like, what do you want him to do? You saw what the ghost did!

Chloe and Ryan start sleeping together which upsets the ghost who watches from the closet. After sex Ryan puts something in her drink but the ghost knocks it off the table so she can't drink it. Ryan keeps showing up and playing mind games with Chloe and drugging her. Lisa returns and tells Chris she had a vision about a window that doesn't open and to be careful. He sends her away. Chris and Rebekah leave on a business trip. Tyler blasts bad music and drinks with Ryan. Ryan spikes his drink and heads to Chloe's room with a spiked drink but she says she does not want it and is going through some shit. He manipulates her by crying into drinking it and she is knocked out but can still hear and see what he is doing. Turns out this bastard killed the other two drugs and made it seem like an overdose by placing a small amount of plastic over their nose and mouth so there is no evidence. This fucker full on nuts!

The ghost races downstairs to try and wake Tyler but struggles until it turns on all the electronics. Tyler races upstairs and yanks Ryan off his sister and then they both go flying out the window and crashing to the ground below, dying. Later the house is empty and they are moving. Rebekah stands in the house for a little longer to be left alone. She looks in the mirror and sees Tyler standing behind her and starts screaming about how he stayed to save Chloe. At this point L and I were baffled and had to read what this meant online.

Okay.

So that psychic lady Lisa was explaining spirit shit earlier and said that time moves different and in loops for the afterlife or something. I thought the spirit was Chloe's dead friend but it was in fact Tyler. He was dead and alive at the same time. Imagine two parallel timelines where one can affect the other. His ghost version got mad when the living version was talking shit about Chloe. It didn't want her sleeping with Ryan because Ryan would eventually kill her and was drugging her. So yeah. Good movie.

Lucy Liu as Rebekah Payne

Chris Sullivan as Chris Payne

Callina Liang as Chloe Payne

Eddy Maday as Tyler Payne

West Mulholland as Ryan Caldwell

Natalie Woolams-Torres as Lisa

Lucas Papaelias as Carl

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