Review: ‘Presence’ (2025), starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland and Julia Fox

January 20, 2025

by Carla Hay

Callina Liang, Chris Sullivan, Eddie Maday and Lucy Liu in “Presence” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“Presence” (2025)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “Presence” features an Asian and white cast of characters (with one Latin person and one African American) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A married couple and their two teenage children move into a house, where the couple’s daughter senses that the house is haunted by a ghost.

Culture Audience: “Presence” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of director Steven Soderbergh and don’t mind watching a haunted house movie that is more of a psychological mystery than a typical supernatural horror film.

Callina Liang, Chris Sullivan, Eddy Maday, Lucy Liu and Julia Fox in “Presence” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

The horror film Presence is told from the point of view of a silent ghost in a haunted house, so the foreboding tone is more subtle than most other supernatural movies. Viewers need patience for the buildup to the movie’s impactful ending. Anyone expecting more action and constant jump scares might be bored with “Presence,” which is a unique and competently made film, but it’s not particularly outstanding.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp, “Presence” had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and its Canadian premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie takes place in an unnamed U.S. suburban city. (“Presence” was actually filmed in Cranford, New Jersey.) Almost every scene in the movie is at the house where the haunting takes place.

“Presence” begins by showing a real-estate agent named Cece (played by Julia Fox) doing a quick walking inspection of various rooms inside an empty Cape Cod-style, three-story house that could be bought on a middle-class income. Cece is taking one last look before some prosepective buyers come over to see this house, which has recently been put up for sale. In fact, the people coming over the see the house will be the first since the house when on the market again. (Even though Fox shares headline billing, she’s only in the movie for less than 10 minutes.)

The people looking at the house are a family of four: Rebecca Payne (played by Lucy Liu), Christopher “Chris” Payne (played by Chris Sullivan) and their two teenage children: Tyler “Ty” Payne (played by Eddy Maday) and Chloe Payne (played by Callina Liang), who both attend Crawford High School. Tyler is about 17 years old. Chloe is about 16 years old.

Within a few minutes of the family’s arrival, it becomes obvious that Rebecca is the most dominant person in the family. The job occupations of Rebecca and Chris are not stated in the movie, but Rebecca works as some type of high-powered position at an unnamed company, and she has a higher income than Chris. After a tour of the house, Rebecca announces that she wants to buy the house, and she’s sure that whoever sees the house next will want to buy it too.

Whatever Rebecca wants, Rebecca gets. The Paynes buy the house and don’t take long to move into their new home. After they settle in, the family dynamics start to be seen. Tyler is Rebecca’s favorite child, while Chloe is Chris’ favorite child. Rebecca has an overly close and somewhat creepy relationship with Tyler. By contrast, Chris and Chloe have a healthy father-daughter relationship with the appropriate boundaries.

In a private conversation between Rebecca and Tyler in the kitchen, she tells Tyler how she feels about him: “I’ve never felt so close to anyone,” she says in a tone that’s more like how someone would talk to a lover than to a child. Tyler asks Rebecca: “What abut Chloe?” Rebecca answers dismissively, “That’s just different.”

Although Tyler and Chloe are never seen at school in this movie, it’s easy to see that Tyler is the more popular and more outgoing sibling among their peers. Chloe is more introverted and more sensitive than Tyler. Chloe is image-conscious but not as much a Tyler, who places a lot of importance on being perceived as one of the “cool kids” at school.

Tyler and Chloe don’t really get along with each other and have a tendency to argue and insult each other. It could be just normal friction between two teenage siblings. But conversations in the movie later reveal that Chloe is in a fragile mental state.

Part of it has to do with her grieving over the death of her best friend Nadia, who died in her sleep. It’s implied that her death was drug-related because Tyler insensitively calls Nadia a “drug addict” in one of his arguments with Chloe. Nadia’s death was recent and happened not long after another death of a teenage girl in the community, who died in a similar way.

At first, the ghost seems to observe the family and doesn’t want its presence to be known. But then, the ghost makes its presence known to Chloe. In one incident, while Chloe is taking a shower in the bathroom next to her bedroom, the ghost moves some books from Chloe’s bed to a dresser in the same room. When Chloe gets out of the shower, she immediately notices that the books were moved.

Chloe sees other signs that the house might be haunted. She confides in her parents about this fear. Predictably, Chris is more understanding than Rebecca. When the parents discuss Chloe’s troubled mental state, Chris says that Chloe should see a therapist. Rebecca disagrees and says, “Time is what we need.”

There’s another problem in the family that is hinted at throughout the movie. Chris is seen making secretive phone calls, asking advice from someone named Howard (who is presumably an attorney) about how much a spouse can get in trouble for knowing about the other spouse being involved in something illegal. Chris seems very conflicted about whatever is bothering him.

Meanwhile, Tyler has gotten closer to a new friend at school named Ryan (played by West Mulholland), who comes from an affluent and prominent family. Ryan comes over to the Payne family home with Tyler one day after school. Tyler introduces Ryan to Chloe. Ryan and Chloe have an immediate and growing attraction to each other.

The rest of “Presence” shows how certain relationships change and how the ghost reacts to those changes. Although some of the movie’s scenes are nothing but the ghost observing mundane activities in the house, “Presence” always has an underlying tension that doesn’t really let up, because this is a horror movie, and you know something bad is bound to happen.

As for the ghost, certain actions show that the ghost is not there to scare but to protect. But who needs protecting and why? Some viewers might figure out the answer long before it’s revealed in the movie. The ghostly activities become a big-enough concern to the Payne family that a psychic medium named Lisa (played by Natalie Woolams-Torres), who is Cece’s sister-in-law, eventually does a reading of the house. Lisa arrives at the house with her husband Carl (played by Lucas Papaelias), who does not have psychic abilities.

“Presence” is very dependent on its cinematography to make the movie be effective. And on that level, Soderbergh’s cinematography (he’s also the film’s editor) mostly succeeds, as the camera bobs and weaves like a silent observer who can float through space. At the same time, the camera from the ghost’s point of view can also make viewers feel slightly claustrophobic when the ghost is spying in a small room with a closed door.

Liu is convincing as steely Rebecca, who seems to care more about her job than her marriage. Chris is in love with Rebecca and tells her that he knows that she’s too good for him, which is a sad commentary on his self-esteem, because he doesn’t see his worth as the kind and loving spouse that Rebecca fails to be. Some of the acting performances from the younger cast members are little stiff and awkward, but Liang does an overall very good job of conveying Chloe’s vulnerability and insecurities.

“Presence” has touches of social commentary about how people can project a certain image that could be very different from their real selves behind closed doors in private situations. This is not a ghost story where viewers can expect to see demonic characters with ghoulish appearances. Rather, “Presence” is a chilling observation of monstrous danger that’s much more insidious because it looks harmless on the surface.

Neon will release “Presence” in U.S. cinemas on January 24, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on February 25, 2025.

Review: ‘We Are Freestyle Love Supreme,’ starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, Anthony Veneziale, Christopher Jackson, Thomas Kail, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Bill Sherman and Chris Sullivan

July 17, 2020

by Carla Hay

Lin-Manuel Miranda, Chris Sullivan, Anthony Veneziale, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Andrew Bancroft, Bill Sherman, Christopher Jackson and Arthur Lewis in “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” (Photo courtesy of Hulu)

“We Are Freestyle Love Supreme”

Directed by Andrew Fried

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in New York City and partially in the United Kingdom, the documentary “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” tells the story of the multiracial musical improvisational group Freestyle Love Supreme, whose most famous member is Tony-winning star Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Culture Clash: The members of Freestyle Love Supreme struggled for years to make a living from their craft, and then the group’s loyalty and work schedules were tested after Miranda and musical director Thomas Kail went on to mega-success with the Tony-winning musicals “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.”

Culture Audience: “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Lin-Manuel Miranda and musical theater that includes hip-hop.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, Christopher Jackson and Anthony Veneziale in the mid-2000s in “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” (Photo courtesy of Hulu)

The feel-good documentary “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” shows what can happen when several tight-knit friends in a musical improvisational group manage to keep the group going for several years, despite the members’ individual careers and personal lives going on divergent paths. Directed by Andrew Fried, who began filming footage for the documentary in 2005, “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” is a breezy ride through the group’s story, even if it it feels like a lot of inevitable behind-the-scenes turmoil was deliberately left out of the film. The documentary includes exclusive interviews (everyone in the group is interviewed separately), as well as archival on-stage and off-stage footage, spanning from the mid-2000s to the group’s stint on Broadway in 2019.

Freestyle Love Supreme’s most famous member is Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony-winning star/creator of the stage musicals “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.” Miranda (whose nickname in the group is Lin-Man) is an original member of Freestyle Love Supreme, which was formed in New York City in 2004. But the documentary shows that the origins of Freestyle Love Supreme really began in 1999, during a road trip taken by group co-founder Anthony Veneziale (also known as Two-Touch) and Thomas “Tommy” Kail, the group’s musical director who went on to direct the original Broadway productions of “In the Heights” and “Hamilton,” as well as most of Freestyle Love Supreme’s stage shows.

According to what Kail says in the documentary, he and Veneziale (who met when they were students at Wesleyan University) went on a road trip from New York City to Iowa, to help a friend make an independent film. During the trip, the only way they could stay awake was by listening to the B-side of the Daft Punk song “Around the World.”

“Anthony freestyled for four straight hours,” says Kail of that road trip. “That, in some way, was the seed for Freestyle Love Supreme.” Freestyle Love Supreme then became a collective of friends who would get together at the Drama Book Shop, which was their creative “lab,” according to Kail. Although Kail isn’t an on-stage performer for Freestyle Love Supreme, he is credited with being the behind-the-scenes architect of the group’s career.

Freestyle Love Supreme then honed their improvisational skills so that their on-stage act became randomly choosing words volunteered by the show’s audience, and then making up hip-hop-infused, often-comedic stories about those words right there on the spot. Veneziale (who also co-founded the improv FLS Academy) is the group’s emcee, who interviews audience members during the show and brings some audience members on stage. This highly interactive format makes every Freestyle Love Supreme show truly unique, which is in contrast to the traditional theater format of doing the same show for every performance.

The other original members of Freestyle Love Supreme are Christopher Jackson (also known as C-Jack); Bill Sherman (also known as King Sherman); Chris Sullivan (also known as Shockwave); and Arthur Lewis (also known as Arthur the Geniuses). Miranda and Kail went on to collaborate on “In the Heights” (which went to Broadway in 2008) and “Hamilton” (which made its Broadway debut in 2015), with both musicals including Jackson (who is Miranda’s best friend) as a co-star.

After the success of “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” made Miranda, Jackson and Kail too busy for Freestyle Love Supreme on a regular basis, Freestyle Love Supreme added new members to the group. The documentary does a very good job of putting a spotlight on each member, so that people can know what their unique contributions are to Freestyle Love Supreme. (Freestyle Love Supreme has also had numerous guest performers, including Daveed Diggs and Wayne Brady.)

Miranda, who is a self-described “theater geek,” is shown to be an energetic optimist but also a perfectionist who can be very hard on himself. Jackson, who is more laid-back than Miranda, is described as the “dad” of the group, since he’s the oldest member and the first member of Freestyle Love Supreme to get married and have children.

Sherman, who plays keyboards and has a goofy sense of humor, used to be Kail’s roommate and remains very close to Kail. Sullivan, who does most of Freestyle Love Supreme’s beatboxing, is the “actual musical heartbeat of the group,” says Kail. Lewis, who plays keyboards, is described as the group’s most intellectually gifted member and “the ethereal one” of Freestyle Love Supreme, according to Kail.

Freestyle Love Supreme’s newer members are also given a spotlight: Utkarsh Ambudkar (also known as UTK The INC) is described by Miranda as “the best nuts-to-bolts rapper in the group.” James Monroe Iglehart (also known as J-Soul) is praised by multiple people as being the best singer in the group. Andrew Bancroft (also known as Jelly Donut) seems to be in awe of his group mates and says he still can’t believe that he’s in Freestyle Love Supreme.

And by the time that Freestyle Love Supreme began headlining on Broadway, the group had added its first permanent female member: Aneesa Folds (also known as Young Nees), who expresses how star-struck and honored she is to be in Freestyle Love Supreme. Why did it take so long to add a woman to the group? Probably because after the #MeToo movement happened, Freestyle Love Supreme wanted deflect any criticism that this group deliberately excludes people who aren’t of the male gender.

It probably never crossed their minds to invite women into their group before, because it’s clear from the archival footage that Freestyle Love Supreme operated very much like a fraternity, but not in a mean-spirited way. However, because of heightened awareness of how gender discrimination against people who aren’t cisgender males has been an ongoing problem in the entertainment industry (and society in general), it no doubt prompted Freestyle Love Supreme to take a hard look at their own decision making in whom they were inviting to be a part of their exclusive club.

The documentary doesn’t call attention to why Freestyle Love Supreme was a male-only group for about 15 years, probably because the male members of the group don’t want to address this issue on camera. Instead, the movie puts an emphasis on all the camaraderie they have—perhaps a little too much emphasis, to the point where it looks sugarcoated. There’s a lot of screen time devoted to soundbites where the members of Freestyle Love Supreme praise themselves and each other.

Jackson comments on how Freestyle Love Supreme is a privilege of being able to work with his closest friends: “If more people had this experience, truly, the world would be a better place.” Ambudkar says that he felt an instant connection to the members of Freestyle Love Supreme: “Whatever Freestyle was doing, it fit me like a well-worn hoodie.”

Miranda says that in the group’s early days, there was a real struggle to build a fan base, but the audience grew when the show improved and because Freestyle Love Supreme didn’t give up: “We had to work hard [for an audience]. The show worked.”

Some of the documentary’s best archival footage is of a pivotal point in the early career of Freestyle Love Supreme, when the group was invited to perform at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. No one knew at the time that Miranda was three years away from finding Broadway fame and acclaim with “In the Heights.” But during this trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the members of Freestyle Love Supreme considered it to be the highlight of their careers so far.

There’s a real infectious joy in this footage that shows their youthful optimism, as they roam the streets of Edinburgh and soak up Scottish culture. The documentary also includes footage of the group reading their first negative review together. And even that moment of the group getting some scathing criticism has a lot of humor and shows how closely bonded the group members are.

A present-day Miranda looks back on that time with a lot of fondness in the documentary. He says that even though all of the members of Freestyle Love Supreme were financially broke at the time, and their futures were uncertain, it was one of the happiest times of his life. “Everything was happening, but nothing was happening,” Miranda quips.

Some other great archival footage is of Miranda and Kail walking through New York City’s Times Square, not long before “In the Heights” was scheduled to begin previews on Broadway. Kail and Miranda look up in awe and excitement at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, which had the “In the Heights” billboard and marquee already prepared.

In this archival footage, Kail and Miranda joke about how people in Times Square might or might not recognize them. Kail, who resembles former “American Idol” finalist Justin Guarini, says that people probably think he’s “that guy from ‘American Idol.'” Kail also jokes that people will probably think that Miranda looks like a “Mexican Bud Bundy,” referring to Miranda’s slight resemblance to actor David Faustino, who had the role of bratty son Bud Bundy in the sitcom “Married With Children.” (Miranda’s heritage is actually Puerto Rican, not Mexican.)

All joking aside, a group of people working together this long can’t be immune to jealousies, rivalries and conflicts. Although the documentary acknowledges that Miranda is the most famous member of Freestyle Love Supreme (after his Broadway success, he became a star and a producer in movies and television), the other group members who talk about it for the documentary only express happiness for Miranda. If they have any envy that Miranda’s career has skyrocketed, compared to the careers of other group members, it’s not shown in this movie.

However, there is some acknowledgement that Freestyle Love Supreme did go through a less-than-smooth adjustment period when it became obvious that in order for the group to keep going, certain group members (namely Miranda, Jackson and Kail) would not be as available as they once were, due to their busy Broadway careers. Another big shift in the group’s dynamics occurred when Veneziale moved to San Francisco (because of his wife’s graduate studies) and started a family there.

As a result of that relocation to the other side of the United States, Veneziale and Kail, who used to be best friends, say they became estranged from each other, and their relationship hasn’t really been the same since. Veneziale describes Kail in the early days of Freestyle Love Supreme: “He was my co-conspirator in making things.” Kail says that Veneziale is the “guts and blood” and the “engine” of Freestyle Love Supreme. However, it’s obvious that there’s still tension between Kail and Veneziale, because they choose their words very carefully when talking about each other, while expressing regret that they aren’t close friends anymore.

The documentary doesn’t bring up personal problems in Freestyle Love Supreme until the last third of the movie. Ambudkar opens up about his alcoholism and how it affected him and his role in the group. Ambudkar says that the success of “Hamilton,” which made Miranda even less available to Freestyle Love Supreme than ever before, forced Ambudkar to take a hard look at where his life was headed, and it motivated Ambudkar to get clean and sober.

The clips of Freestyle Love Supreme performing on stage, especially on Broadway, are absolutely electric and elevate this documentary, which plays it very safe overall. “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” gives the impression that it doesn’t want to divulge a lot of the realistic behind-the-scenes ego clashes in the group, for fear that it would mess up the “lovefest” vibe that the documentary is trying to convey. It’s why viewers of this movie get a lot of effusively upbeat soundbites that are a lot like this one from Ambudkar when he describes Freestyle Love Supreme: “It’s truly about embracing and celebrating the human experience.”

Hulu premiered “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme” on July 17, 2020.

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