SPOILER ALERT: 

After watching on as the Payne family turns against one another, the Presence that drifts around their newly purchased, bougie abode makes a grand gesture to save its tattered residents. Looming above as the drugged Chloe (Callina Liang) is about to be murdered by her new boyfriend Ryan (West Mulholland), the ghost swoops downstairs to awaken her brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) from his own roofie-induced slumber. In a possessed rush, Tyler storms up the stairwell, down the corridor and enters the bedroom to tackle Ryan, who has already killed one of Chloe’s friends and staged it as an overdose. In the scuffle, the two boys abruptly fly out of the second-floor window. The Presence then looks below to see their motionless bodies splayed in the driveway.

As a medium indicated earlier, the Presence is confused by linear, earthbound time and is occupying the past to prevent a terrible event. With the Presence revealed to be Tyler, the film’s events are reframed through the recently departed soul. He looks back on the callousness he showed towards his sister and saving her and, in act of repentance, sending himself to his own death.

“The Presence is there to help them, not harm them. It’s there to save his sister,” Koepp says. “Every time you make a new ghost story, you have to come up with a reason why the people can see ghosts. One way is through trauma. The times when I’ve experienced something traumatic, I am more open to the world and people around me than I am otherwise. If you’re suffering yourself, you notice the suffering of others more acutely.”

Blocking the Presence, Scripting its Psychological State

“When people start shouting at each other, we get anxious. We back away from them.” Or, “We’ve seen enough and get bored and move out.” You’re definitely writing it as a character.  The character of the ghost is played by Soderbergh: his camera. He had to creep around in a way that seemed appropriate. The ghost is skittish, so you’ll see it back away from a situation or hide in the closet. The camera behaves like that character would.

One of the reasons Steven explores the house in the opening shot is he wants to say, “Look, this is all somebody’s point of view.” Horror audiences are pretty savvy, they see formal invention, so filmmakers have to vary the genre.

Soderbergh felt that this should not be a long film — because of budget, but also because the aesthetic concept–85 minutes is plenty. After that, we start to really feel the conceit of it and not like it. I’d scripted sort of shuttering effect. But Steven wanted to use fades, because then he could vary the length of it depending on how long of a time jump it was, or how long we needed to digest a scene.  Every scene had to be a oner.  A cut to black signals passage of time, it would have been too jarring otherwise.

Being Half-Asian

Soderbergh asked, “Can she be Asian?” Maybe he had Lucy in mind and that’s why. And I thought, “I don’t see any reason why not.” He sensed what you do, which is we don’t see this very often. That was how I was on “Stir of Echoes.” I didn’t want to see upper middle-class family in beautiful house, because you see that in every ghost story. Can’t this be working class Chicago? You get to see different kinds of people in movies, which makes things feel more real and freshens things up.

There is a new idea we have that he has reminded me many times I’m late with; it’s just been a busy year. We were having dinner one night, and he said, “I want to do something all from the point of view of a ghost. I want to do it all in a house and it’s one family.” That just rang my bells. I love a confined story. I love the restriction of the aesthetic idea. Those kinds of restrictions spur creativity; they force you into thinking of new ways.

Soderbergh’s Contribution to the Story

Soderbergh’s only thing was, there’s a house with a presence in it. It starts with a family being shown it by real estate agent. This family should be really messed up. I went from there. We did it fairly quickly. The other thing was, there was a strike coming. I gave it to him a week before the strike started; he got waiver and shot it. It was a bummer, because I couldn’t go to set. I didn’t get to see him doing it. I was curious. But a lot of times good things happen quickly; it’s the ones that take forever that somehow never find their way.