Overview
A family becomes convinced they are not alone after moving into their new home in the suburbs.
A family of four move into a large suburban house inhabited by a presence who seems focussed on the troubled teenage daughter, Chloe (Callina Liang), who is the first to sense that something is haunting the house. A spiritualist is called in and confirms the haunting, offering some cryptic clues as to what it wants, but whilst the father (Chris Sullivan) believes it, the mother Rebecca (Lucy Liu) and son, Tyler (Eddy Maday), are skeptical. This all sounds familiar to a plethora of other ghost tales, but what makes this film stand out is that the whole tale is told from the perspective of the presence itself.
Less of a horror, and more of a supernatural mystery, the audience are the presence as it wanders around the house, eavesdropping on moments and conversations, and seeing the lives of this family play out. Each scene is played like a one shot, with some taking us on a full journey through multiple rooms with multiple events transpiring around the house, and through the snippets of conversations we get all the pieces of information needed to start to piece together where this spirit came from and why it is focussed on Chloe.
To say more would be to give things away, and so all I will add is that Liang as Chloe stands out strongly in her central role, with her rebellious and troubled recent history giving some depth of understanding to her behaviours. Lucy Liu is a little underserved in her part, but Chris Sullivan’s father figure more than compensates with a really strong bond between him and his on screen daughter that feels authentic. Eddy Malay, sadly, diminishes the family a little, and never feels like he really gives enough of his character that the story needed, which especially doesn’t help when he befriends Ryan (played by West Mulholland) who doesn’t seem like someone who would find commonality with Tyler. But Soderbergh holds it all together well enough – if a little underdeveloped – through his unique approach in granting new life to an old and tired cliche.
Certainly worth a watch.