Steven Soderbergh on making a haunted house thriller from the ghost's POV
The director says his new film, Presence, was inspired by his own experience with the supernatural
Steven Soderbergh — the Oscar-winning director behind Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven and countless other hits — is now shaking up the horror genre with his latest film, Presence.
It's a paranormal thriller about a family who move into a new house and discover they're not alone — but there's a twist. The story doesn't unfold from the family's perspective, but rather from the point-of-view of the housebound spirit.
In an interview with Q's Tom Power, Soderbergh reveals that the film was inspired by his own experience with a supernatural presence in his home in Los Angeles.
"When we moved in, we were told that some time ago — I want to say 20 years ago, 25 years ago, I should really check — somebody had died in that house," he tells Power. "The neighbours explained to us their theory … which was that a mother was murdered by her daughter."
While the official ruling deemed the death a suicide, Soderbergh's neighbours concluded that it was a murder based off of the blood and drag marks they observed on the property.
"The neighbour felt very strongly that the daughter killed her mom and got away with it," Soderbergh says. "Then we had a house sitter staying in our house, and there's this sort of TV room and a long hallway that leads to the bedrooms. Our friend was watching TV and out of the corner of her eye saw somebody cross the end of the hallway from the bathroom to the bedroom … and that freaked her out."
The director says he noticed some odd occurrences himself, such as lights being on that he thought were turned off, but nothing that felt threatening to him. Generally, he doesn't seem fazed about the prospect of his house being haunted. In fact, as demonstrated by the premise of his new film, you could even say Soderbergh is empathetic to ghosts.
It may have something to do with the fact that his late mother was an expert in parapsychology (the study of paranormal phenomena, including the search for evidence of their existence).
"She believed in all of it," Soderbergh says. "We had this endless parade of fascinating people coming through the house to meet with my mom, talk to my mom, other psychics who she would connect with…. To hear her tell it, she was 'force-sensitive.'"
But at a certain point, Soderbergh started feeling "really awkward" about his mom's area of expertise, which was extremely niche for the time, and tried not to engage with it too much. "What do you say when you call your mother and she says, 'I knew you were going to call.' What do you say to that? Like, there's nothing you can say."
Presence recently had its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It's set to hit theatres sometime in January.
The full interview with Steven Soderbergh is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. He also talks about his unconventional way of shooting his latest film, the time he had a few too many drinks at the Oscars and won best director, and why streaming might be the most destructive thing to ever happen to filmmaking. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Steven Soderbergh produced by Ben Edwards.
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