Movie Nation

It’s just a haunted house story, just a movie with objects that move and things that go bump in the night. Well, mostly in broad daylight.

“Presence” is a “A Ghost Story” filmed like a “Paranormal Activity” installment. And it’s by one of the American cinema’s true American Masters, Stephen Soderbergh.

The director of everything from “Contagion” to “Erin Brockovich” and one of the most accomplished and constantly-employed screenwrieers of our time, David Koepp (“Spider-Man,” later “Indiana Jones” movies, etc), an accomplished director himself, deconstruct “the ghost story” genre and reach back to their minimalist cinema pasts for this quiet, intimate drama with a supernatural edge.

“Presence” doles out its jolt and thrills sparingly, immersing us in its limited, claustrophobic milieu and connects us with its sharply drawn characters.

A family (Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, with Callina Liang and Eddy Maday) have moved into a new-to-them hundred year-old, two story wood frame house. Whatever the home’s history, it’s not truly “haunted” until they show up.

Call it the House of Bad Karma.

Rebekah (Liu) is mixed-up in something sketchy at work, and she’s plainly got a favorite child. Tall, handsome and athletic Tyler (newcomer Maday) is abrasive, indulged and mixing with a mean boys crowd. Husband Chris (Sullivan of “This is Us”) is tuned in to that, his wife’s coming crisis, and her lopsided parenting and looking for a way out.

And underclasswoman daughter Chloe (Liang, of TV’s “Tell Me Everything”) is the child who knew two female classmates who wound up dead in recent weeks, the consequences of drug abuse, so everyone says.

But when stuff starts moving around in her room, Chloe’s uneasiness about their new home takes on meaning.

“It’s Nadia,” one of the dead girls, she finally blurts. “I think she’s here. I feel her.”

Chloe has felt this “presence,” and whatever its unease or intent, it’s moved in. We’ve felt it with her, because this movie is filmed from the “presence’s” point of view.

The tone Koepp, the cast and director/cinematographer Soderbergh reach for and achieve here is the great triumph of this compact, moving genre picture. Soderbergh’s camera floats through the house, settling in on tight compositions as it reaches each room and follows each character in each “long take” scene.

We or rather the “presence” are eavesdropping, peeking through louvred closet doors, standing over a teen’s bed or a wife’s evasive tap-tap-tapping on her laptop, which she doesn’t want her husband to see.

We follow Chris onto the wrap-around porch/deck, getting phone advice from a lawyer for “a friend.”

Once the story settles in, we meet just a couple of outsiders, and one of them is the cliched amateur, concerned and sympathetic medium (Natalie Woolams-Torres). What can she tell them, warn them about? Who in that house will listen?

What the writer and director were going for here is a dissection of a family already in crisis before something supernatural shakes rooms, rattles things off shelves and focuses on Chloe.

Soulful, concerned Dad lectures his son about “the fine man” he might be, the one he’s waiting for his teen with a “mean streak” to finally reveal. Brittle, distracted wife Rebekah keeps her panicked phone chats furtive and her favoritism on her foul-mouthed and dismissive son, who sees mercurial, growing-up-too-fast Chloe as the queen of attention-grabbing acting-out.

And Chloe is the one who should listen when her father says “bad decisions are the kind that last forever.”

The performances are understated and considered.

The shooting strategy adds to our unease, as a lack of edits (all closeups are medium shots achieved by physically moving the wide-angle lens camera in tight) works on the mind as much as seeing school books or whatever move of their own volition.

One shouldn’t oversell “Presence.” At the end of the day, it’s just the simplest sort of ghost story, told from each character’s point of view in their scenes, always spied from the ghost’s-eye-view.

But if you love horror, this minimalist “Sex, Lies and the Supernatural” is on an astral plane all its own. Its blend of mystery, suspense, chills and pathos are perfectly pitched. “Presence” is simply sublime.

Rating: R, violence, sex, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Lucy Liu, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday and Chris Sullivan.

Credits: Directed by Stephen Soderbergh, scripted by David Koepp. A Neon release.

Running time: 1:25