The Presence

This is an odd one. There's some good acting and beautifully haunting locations on display. There's a creepy apparition type (Shane West), and a nice, slow-burning story being told, featuring some appealing characters. Yet for some reason director Tom Provost doesn't seem to want to make the most of the more dramatic moments.

An accident involving a rock fall is adequately staged, and yet contains no threat whatsoever. The music (provided by Jay Duerr among others) is determined to undermine such scenes. Often the incidentals are curiously jaunty when they should contain some menace.

Most characters remain unnamed; West provides a very solid 'ghost' - clean cut, hair gelled, looks like he might work out. Only a grey pallor indicates any other-worldliness. For a while, the most alarming things are the woman's (Mira Sorvino) mood swings.

I applaud Provost's desire to do something different but wish that more could have been made of the creepier moments. My score is 6 out of 10.

The first minutes (quite a lot of minutes actually, though I did not count) are completely without any dialog. This seems to work as a silent movie as well. Of course later on, we'll get dialog and we'll get the story going. It is quite original in its theme and what it tries to do. I'd even say it achieves that goal.

Sorvino plays it as good as it gets, but the mentioned pace might feel and lead people into disliking the movie. I wasn't sure at first either. But it's nice seeing something trying to go another route. The cinematography is really good and the sound design fits really good too. We may have some action towards the end, that might feel a bit too much, but it's still true to the nature of the movie.

I loved the movie so much, I watched it a second time. It is soooo beautifully shot, and it really has something for everyone. It's scary, mysterious, thought-provoking, inspiring, unique, and even romantic, but not conventionally. People seem to get into discussions afterwords, and there is nothing worse than a movie you have nothing to say about after seeing.

I have also since met the Director, and he is such a cool, nice, super smart guy. Someone to watch for sure. I will surely be telling everyone to go see it as soon as it hits theaters. A sleeper hit, I suspect.

I also can NOT watch horror movies, I get waaay too scared. This was scary, but I was still somehow able to watch it--maybe because the point of the movie is not to just scare people, it just happens to be really scary (at least to me) in parts. The scary parts had more going on than just "this movie is just supposed to scare the crap out of you" kinda stuff. It has real characters that you care about or are drawn to, complex relationships, and mysteries to uncover. And the way it is shot and the lighting and environment are like old world paintings, but in the present. Gorgeous.

My wife and I just watched it, and I thought it was quite good. It is certainly somewhat of a "chick flick", which probably accounts for many of the negative reviews (I actually don't see why so many guys don't like romantic movies). Now, if you try to make too much sense of it from a rational point of view, then you'll be missing the whole point. On the surface, it's a ghost story, but really it's about a woman struggling to come to terms with the male demons from her past and cast them out. It's kind of like abstract art - it's an emotional piece that amplifies what's inside the viewer. It sort of reminded me of "What Dreams May Come", another favorite of mine. I suggest you give it a shot.

"The Presence" was somewhat of an uneventful and uninspiring movie. It had potential, and I was expecting more of a horror movie. But it turned out to be some kind of sappy story with some apparitions thrown into the storyline.

Now, had the movie left out the ghosts and just dealt with the "demons" that were tormenting the woman (played by Mira Sorvino) it would have come off as a much better movie. Just sticking to dealing with the theme of a woman tormented by her father's abuse and trying to escape the past by going into solitude would have made for a much nicer story. I, personally, didn't get the whole idea with the ghosts. Why were the "good" ghost and the "bad" ghosts there? It was serving no major purpose. And then suddenly there was this "redeeming" ghost appearing (Deobai Oparei) like some savior or saint? No, no, no... I just didn't work.

However, what was working for the movie was the scenery and sets. Being set in an isolated area with lots of great nature is always nice. And the touch with no electricity in the place worked nicely as well.

The movie was slow in getting to the point, and it was slowly building up suspense, but it never really climaxed. And when the movie was over, I was left with a "was that really it?" feeling. The movie had potential to be much more than it turned out to be. But hey, I am not the one who wrote it, I just watched it. And having sat through it till the very end, I can honestly say that "The Presence" is a ghost movie that will fade into oblivion without leaving any lasting impression.

Despite having a relatively small list of actors and actresses, the people in the movie were doing a good enough job. It was nice to see Sorvino in a movie like this, but at times it felt like she wasn't giving the performance all 100% of her focus. And Shane West, as the ghost, was doing a good job, especially because he wasn't saying anything, so it was all just body-acting and mimicking.

If you are looking for a horror movie, then you are going to be disappointed with "The Presence". If you are looking for something in a drama/supernatural category, then you might like this movie. I was disappointed with the outcome of the movie, and I can honestly say that this is a movie that I will never be returning to again.

I am rating the movie a low 4 because it failed to impress me and failed to really entertain me. What is keeping the rating 'up' on my behalf is the tormented past-theme that is in the movie, just a shame that it wasn't the focus part of the storyline.