The idea of seeing things from the perspective of those who have passed is not a new or innovative concept. From movies like David Lowery’s A Ghost Story to Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lovely Bones, we’ve experienced narratives of tragedy told from the POV of the ghosts acting as protagonists in these stories. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that despite its attempts to liven up the trope, a lot of the notes that director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp hit in Presence are ones that are well trodden.

Presence is not a bad film. It’s a fair enough short piece of entertainment, courtesy of Neon Films. However I can’t say it’s particularly great either. It’s the familiarity of the story that honestly drags it down considerably.

Without spoiling too much, the movie centers on a family moving into a new home. Rebecca (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) have two kids: Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday). Chloe has recently experienced the tragic loss of her best friend and has grown a bit more withdrawn and tormented. While Tyler has a lot going for him as the golden child of the family, and Rebecca’s favorite. Unbeknownst to them, there is a… well… a supernatural presence inhabiting their home. The origins of how it got there, and what it’s doing there, of course, remain a mystery.

I really must warn you in advance, that anyone anticipating something akin to The Conjuring or Insidious should look elsewhere. Despite its deceiving marketing campaign, Presence is not those movies. It’s a lot more of a supernatural drama about a family and their issues than it is a horror story about demons, ghosts, or malicious entities. The trailers may have you think it’s a horror movie, but I’m here to shut that down for you right now. It’s not. So temper your expectations there.

That being said, as stated at the top, as disappointing as the notion might seem, it’s also not an offensively bad movie. In fact, Soderbergh utilizes a very interesting first person POV technique to shoot the film to craft a story where the ghost is the active protagonist of this movie. However, deeper than that, and more unique, is the voyeuristic feel that makes the audience feel like it’s playing the role of this character in the movie. Overall the gimmick lends itself to a fun and fairly innovative aspect for this movie, even if the novelty wears off after a while.

Soderbergh’s direction and Koepp’s script are much more interested in what these characters are going through than any cheap scares that you’d otherwise find in a haunted house movie. The tragedy that has struck Chloe and how that impacts the family’s viewpoint of her and one another make everything feel fairly relatable, despite being a bit tropey. We’ve seen this sort of melodrama unfold in numerous haunted house pictures and movies about grief to last a lifetime. And Presence doesn’t necessarily bring anything new here in that regard. However, at least the relatability of this being an average family with highs and lows keeps you moderately interested in what they’re saying to one another.

In particular the relationship between Chris and Chloe is incredibly sweet. Sullivan plays the role with a warmth and frustration that makes you automatically connect to him. Liu’s terrific, of course, using her usual type-A character trademarks to flesh out a mother really blind to the needs of her own daughter, because she’s obsessed with the well-being of her favorite child, Tyler. Maday’s very good and incredibly convincing at playing the insensitive older brother role. However, the breakout performance here really goes to Callina Liang, who plays Chloe’s character as complex, tortured, and yet incredibly empathetic.

All around, choosing to center a supernatural film on an average American family consisting of Asian American characters was a terrific choice from a representation standpoint in Presence. And a welcome change of pace from your average “Caucasian family moves into a haunted house” movie. The fact that the movie doesn’t need to draw attention to it to get you to understand that typical American families don’t always have to be Caucasian is something to celebrate as well.

That being said, despite how the characters are portrayed and who is playing them, I can’t say there’s much to how they are written that piques ones interest. It’s incredibly archetypal of the teenage daughter to be angsty and rebelliously making out with her new boyfriend behind her family’s back. It’s incredibly cliche that the Type-A mother is obsessed solely with work and the achievements of her eldest son. It’s incredibly cliche for the eldest son to be a jerky self-absorbed jock. The script and the conversations between these characters feels so broad and repetitive that it’s hard to really care about what’s happening because we’ve seen it all before.

Furthermore, there are twists within this movie that hearken back to Koepp’s own Stir of Echoes, which makes it a bit more shameless that the writer is merely repeating himself to significantly diminishing results. While Stir of Echoes at least had the benefit of being pretty scary, Presence feels more slice-of-life and average to illicit any real sense of an emotional response other than a shrug at the movie’s conclusion (which I’m sure would prefer to have you shocked rather than tepidly amused). In short, from a screenplay standpoint, we’re seeing less Panic Room/Spider-Man/Stir of Echoes Koepp, and more Kingdom of the Crystal Skull/Mordecai Koepp, concluding with a sigh of disappointment more than awe.

On a technical level, the movie is incredibly dimly lit. I suppose it’s difficult to maintain a brighter look to the film given that it’s meant to look handheld and realistic. But it also makes it hard to give the house itself any sense of character. There’s a really important mirror in the film, for instance, that should stand out more as a key artifact. However there’s no real dramatic weight to it because it’s importance isn’t highlighted as significantly as it should be. That being said, I will give the film credit for having a fairly effective score by composer Zack Ryan, supplying us with mood and tension at points that would be otherwise dull. The sound design and editing is also well done, and makes the most of the low budget charms of the film, giving it more Paranormal Activity tension than the script really deserves.

Overall, it’s nice that there’s a haunted house movie, shot in the first-person POV, centered on a mixed Asian American family. Presence is an entertaining enough 90-minute family drama with strong performances from a POC cast (and Sullivan). However, it’s also a cliched and forgettable 90-minute family drama, with twists and a central concept that (despite the innovative nature of how it was filmed) we’ve seen far too many times. I wouldn’t exactly put it high on my must-see list for this year. However, I’m happy that a film like this exists, at least for representation purposes.

Overall Score (on an entertainment level): C+
Overall Score (on a representation level): A

Presence hits theaters January 24.