#461: House Haunters, Pt. 2 — Presence

The Next Picture Show

Telegraph Road Productions

Tv & Film, Film Reviews, Film History

4.6 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Steven Soderbergh’s new PRESENCE flips the typical haunted house narrative inside out, but unlike the other film in this pairing, THE OTHERS, it makes its point of view clear from the opening frames. But that POV doesn’t slide fully into focus until PRESENCE’s final-act reveal, which left us with some questions, both critical and metaphysical, to dig into this week. Then we bring THE OTHERS back into the conversation to discuss how these two very different takes on the haunted house — one classical, one revisionist — each makes use of confined space, complex parent-child dynamics, and ambiguity about how time functions in an eternal afterlife. Then we keep the ghost stories coming in Your Next Picture Show, with some recommendations for films with an unusual or memorable perspective on domestic hauntings. Intro: (00:00:00-00:01:58) Presence review (spoiler-free): (00:01:590-00:20:10) Presence review continued (spoilers): (00:20:11-00:27:56) Connections: (00:27:57-00:56:14) Your Next Picture Show: (00:56:15-01:06:50) Next episode preview and credits: (01:06:51-01:11:05) Please share your thoughts about THE OTHERS, PRESENCE, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to [email protected], or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Your Next Picture Show: • David Lowery’s A GHOST STORY • Guillermo del Toro’s CRIMSON PEAK • Jack Clayton’s THE INNOCENTS • Sidney J. Furie’s THE ENTITY Next Pairing: NO OTHER LAND and THE KILLING FIELDS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Want to give a special someone a gift they'll truly love this Valentine's Day?
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0:36.5	It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.
0:40.3	You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?
0:47.0	We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.
0:58.3	Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film the way it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Tasha Robinson here again with
1:02.8	Scott Tobias, Keithips, and Genevieve Koski. In our last episode, we discussed Alejandro
1:09.0	Amanabar's The Others, which puts a twisty gothic spin
1:11.9	on the haunted house story, with a little bit of a nod to Henry James, The Turn of the
1:15.9	screw, and with a lot of artful deceit. There's no similar Gothic flavor to Stephen Soderberg's
1:21.4	ghost story presence, which sees the lens of the camera standing in for the titular presence,
1:26.4	an unseen force, moving around a
1:28.2	brightly modernized century-old home. It's been more than a decade now since Sutterberg said he
1:33.0	was retiring from moviemaking, but he just keeps coming back, maybe because he keeps coming up
	...

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