Presence

A family move into a new home - now I did like the meandering corridors and design of this spacious plot, but quickly we discover that it's a paper thin façade for four people who are struggling to get over a trauma. Nope, nothing new so far and, indeed nothing new to come either as daughter "Chloe" (Callina Lang) falls for the rakish "Ryan" (West Mulholland) who is the new best friend of her hunky, charm free and brain dead brother "Tyler" (Eddy Maday). Pretty swiftly, they are at it but simultaneously she starts to feel that she is being watched. Things move about on their own, her brother's room gets trashed and even the woman they bring in to do the "Madame Arcati" thing thinks something isn't right with the place and it's old silver nitrate mirror. Next thing... Well you'll have to watch it and see, but for me the opening couple of minutes of hand-held POV photography really put me off - especially it's use of the fish-eye, scene-stretching, lenses which people don't actually possess. It made me feel slightly seasick and I couldn't decide if it was a drone cam or a very sure-footed person gliding silently about the place giving us a repetitive third party perspective into the family's lives. Mum (Lucy Liu) rarely puts her laptop down; dad (Chris Sullivan) sort of lumbers around rudderless; the brother is a bit of an attention seeking idiot and finally, the daughter is a moody and uninteresting teenager trying to deal with some baggage about which we learn more, later. The parents come across as a couple who would never in a million years have chosen each other in the first place. At least the production doesn't try to hoodwink us with repetitive visual effects, but what we are left with here is a dialogue heavy story that ends all too abruptly as if the short story it's adapted from just ran out of ideas. Disappointing, sorry.