Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Presence’ Failed Its Most Compelling Character by Leaning on This Dated, Tired Trope Find help us

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02/02/2025

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Presence.When Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) move into a new home with their teenage children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang), Chloe feels something. Her family writes it off as a trauma response to the death of her best friend, Nadia, but the audience knows Chloe is right. Stephen Soderbergh’s Presence takes a step outside the haunted house genre with the bold choice to tell the story from the ghost’s point of view. The camera moves – and sometimes breathes – as the presence itself. Despite this subversion of form, the film relies on an old and tasteless trope.

“Fridging” refers to putting a woman in harm’s way to motivate male protagonists. The term, originally coined by comic writer Gail Simone, refers to an issue of The Green Lantern where the titular hero finds his girlfriend’s body shoved into a refrigerator. Like all tropes, fridging can be done well. While films like John Wick have a less harmful machismo that explores grief, love, and corrupt systems, more often than not, fridging harms both the overall portrayal of women and the narrative of the story it aims to serve. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the more shocking early episodes, fridges Sunnydale High’s computer teacher and Giles’ love interest, Jenny Calendar. Game of Thrones has a more flagrant example, moving Sansa Stark out of her book-canon narrative to have her tortured and assaulted. Unfortunately, Presence spends most of its runtime leading its audience to believe that Chloe is the protagonist and hero of this story. However, its ending relegates her to a damsel in distress position and frames an unlikeable male character as the sacrificial hero.

Soderbergh Favors Gimmicks and Tropes Over His Central Character

In Presence, Chloe survives, but not until she has all semblance of agency stripped from her. Conversations are had about Chloe – her mother and father discussing whether she needs a new therapist or to just get over it. Even the looming presence that hovers more closely to her than others frames her exclusively in sadness. While the film establishes Chloe’s existing trauma, it doesn’t give her much to do during the traumatic events of the film — namely, grooming and sexual assault.

A story seemingly about teenage Chloe’s increasing supernatural sensitivity after the presumed overdose death of her friend is instead a film with Chloe as a footnote. Chloe’s characterization is sacrificed to make her a victim as repeated sexual coercion becomes the center of Presence. Ryan (West Mulholland), her brother’s new friend turned her love interest, is revealed to be a serial rapist responsible for the death of Nadia and one other high school student. This is no big twist. Ryan is overly menacing from the start and he’s a major source of dread and tension within the movie. The presence watches as Ryan spikes Chloe’s drink after they have sex. It knocks the glass over so Chloe can’t drink it, but it doesn’t prevent more egregious violence later. Presence‘s climax completely hinges on the imminent threat of more direct sexual violence.

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This close call doesn’t give further insight into Ryan and robs Chloe of a moment of discovery. When Ryan returns to try to kill Chloe again, this time after spiking Tyler’s drink too, the presence does nothing as Ryan gives an overwrought bad guy speech. He moves a thin film of cling wrap on and off of Chloe’s face to suffocate her, positioning himself to assault her. Ryan speaks about his power fantasies to a sickening extent, which demonstrates the film’s only real understanding of sexual assault – that it is not about sex, it is about power and control. The central conflict is handled in a way that offers little catharsis to survivors and no perspective to viewers who haven’t lived through something so horrific. Ryan’s perfect crime means Chloe is not cognizant enough to respond. At a moment that is mostly about her pain, Chloe is unable to speak or move.

What’s more, the film reveals the presence doesn’t experience time linearly. It’s in the house because something bad is about to happen, rather than being a traditional haunt conflicted by its past. Is this an opportunity for Chloe to save herself? No. That heroism is delivered to her brother, Tyler. The titular entity that can trash rooms, pull down wall-bolted shelves, and zip pencil cases does nothing until the last second before assault becomes rape. It wakes Tyler, who is the “presence,” inserting himself into this point of his timeline without knowing why. While the film’s unique perspective lends logic to ghost Tyler lingering in moments of danger, Soderbergh fails to balance Ryan’s reveal with moments that humanize or develop Chloe. The experimental lens positions viewers less as an audience and more as bystanders, rendering Chloe secondary to the film’s gimmick.

‘Presence’ Ends On a Meaningless Note

This is where Soderbergh drags sexual assault as a plot device even further into hell. Tyler is an open sexual predator himself. Before the presence trashes Tyler’s room, he casually tells his parents he and his friends convinced a fellow high school student to send nudes. It’s a group activity, and they’ve cloned someone’s phone number so that the girl thinks they’re someone she is attracted to and presumably trusts. This coercive dual persona is an echo of Ryan pretending to be someone he isn’t to have sex with Chloe before he even moves to kill her. While Soderbergh is illuminating a very prevalent issue, positioning Tyler as a predator who learns he is wrong only when it threatens his sister touches on the harmful idea that men can only care about women – and not sexually assaulting them – when they’re a loved one. Tyler’s sacrifice opens into an ending that centers his redemption in the eyes of his mother and her subsequent grief. Chloe — and those who see themselves in her experience — never get their moment of catharsis.

Presence is in theaters now.

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