The door creaks open. Someone’s in your home.
It’s a realtor. Despite your presence, she’s selling the place to a family of four.
Then painters come in and coat your bedroom in a new color. The family unpacks their things. They begin living there.
They don’t notice you, because you’re dead. There’s no physical part of you that they could notice.
Until the daughter, Chloe, starts to sense you nearby. Her brother, Tyler, thinks she’s finally starting to lose it—what with the recent death of her best friend and all. And the mother and father haven’t sensed you at all, either.
But you’re here. You’re watching. You’re listening.
And sooner or later, they’ll all know it.
As it becomes apparent that they’re not alone, the family starts bickering more and more. However, the father, Chris, does everything he can to defuse arguments and keep the strained family together. When Tyler viciously mocks Chloe for believing in a ghost, Chris shuts this behavior down. And despite other members of the family treating Chloe poorly, Chris frequently checks in to make sure Chloe is okay.
Though it’s not just Tyler whom Chris contends with. His wife, Rebekah, is involved in an investigation regarding something illegal she’s done. Though Chris considers leaving her to save himself, he ultimately decides to stay by her side and help her get through the investigation.
As for the presence, it does a couple of good things, too. For instance, when someone attempts to drug someone else via a spiked drink, it forcefully knocks the drink to the ground. Also, it makes its disapproval of a cruel prank known to the perpetrator.
It’s no secret that the “presence” in the film is real—if only because you, the viewer, float along with it. The ghost manipulates the environment, lifting and dragging things around. It’s also able to send what can be described as psionic force waves to get a person’s attention.
Though others occasionally detect the ghost’s presence, they’re unable to pinpoint its location. And it becomes apparent that Chloe has a particular knack for locating the entity. A woman with psychic powers says this is due to the trauma Chloe experienced with the loss of her best friend, describing her connection to the spiritual realm like a door.
“For most people, this door is always closed,” the woman and her husband explain. However, they claim the door can be cracked open while dreaming or when we experience God. In Chloe’s case, it was permanently smashed open due to her traumatic experience, leaving her unable to stop detecting spirits. The psychic receives a vision about a potential future involving the family.
Chris explains to Chloe that his mother was a pious Catholic, which is why he was named after Christ in the first place. For a long time, Chris didn’t like how religious his mother was, but as he got older, he softened his stance as he recognized there were many things he didn’t know and may have gotten wrong. And he tells Chloe that if she truly believes she can sense something dwelling among them, then he’ll believe her.
A high school couple has sex. Nothing critical is seen, though we do hear moaning. Later, we see them in their underwear. The two passionately kiss and removing clothing in a different scene but are interrupted before anything can be seen. A teen girl steps out of the shower in a towel.
A drawn picture depicts a naked woman, and we can see her breast from the side. Someone mentions being aroused.
The ghost occasionally causes a ruckus in the home. In one case, it tears through someone’s room, knocking things to the floor. It also forces a shelf to fall off the wall.
Two teenagers talk about feelings of depression and suicidal ideation. We’re told that some people died from drug overdoses.
We learn that someone murdered a couple of people. Two people fall to their deaths, and we see their bodies splayed out on the concrete below. A teen girl, subdued by a drugged drink, gets choked with plastic wrap by a teen boy, but she survives.
We hear the f-word roughly 50 times and the s-word nearly 25 times. “A–” is used five times. A crude word for female genitalia gets used twice. “D–n,” “h—” and “p-ss” are all used once. God’s name is used in vain nine times. Jesus’ name is likewise used in vain three times. Someone displays her middle finger.
Someone spikes the drinks of unsuspecting victims. People eat what appears to be marijuana brownies. We’re told that a couple of people died from an overdose.
People drink alcohol, and a woman is visibly inebriated. Underaged high schoolers drink liquor, too. Chris and Rebekah share a cigarette.
A boy plays the victim in order to manipulate people into doing what he wants.
We hear that Rebekah has done something illegal, though we aren’t given confirmation as to what it is. Based on context clues, she’s likely being investigated for fraud.
Rebekah and Tyler lack empathy for Chloe and say things that actively tear the family apart. Rebekah, for instance, tells Tyler that she cares for him far more than Chloe, and she comes off as domineering. And Tyler describes a prank in which he helped publicly humiliate a girl at school; while his mother laughs at it, his father and sister find the act repulsive.
In the trailer for Presence, a moviegoer is quoted as saying that it’s “one of the scariest movies you’ll see this year.”
That feels like a strange reaction to me, since this film is far more family drama than it is horror.
Presence is a ghost story told from the ghost’s perspective—and it’s pretty difficult to generate a scare when you’re telling the story through the metaphysical eyes of the usual scream inducer. Still, some audiences may find that unnerving and should take it into account.
Rather, Presence is the story of a family that slowly cracks before your eyes, egged on far more by their callousness to each other than any presence.
That’s not to say that there’s nothing to be afraid of content-wise, however: one scene features intense violence, and another scene shows sex. Pretty much all of them contain the f-word.
And none of it, like the presence in Presence, are invisible issues.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!
