Presence

Oct 23, 2026

Supernatural thriller (2024), shot entirely from the ghost's POV. Written by David Koepp.

Plot Summary (Spoilers)

  • The unseen Presence roams a suburban house; the Payne family — Rebekah, Chris, Tyler, and Chloe — moves in. Chloe is grieving her recently deceased friend Nadia.
  • Ryan, Tyler's new friend, is introduced to Chloe; he steals and abuses drugs from his pharmacist father.
  • The Presence protects Chloe early on — closing her door to shield her, knocking down a shelf to stop a kiss, spilling a drink Ryan had spiked.
  • Chloe reveals she's been sensing the Presence; Tyler mocks her and the family fights.
  • A medium, Lisa, explains the Presence may experience time non-linearly and means no harm — later warning that it's there to prevent a future event.
  • The Presence's physical influence wanes. Ryan drugs Tyler's drink, then pressures Chloe into drinking and begins suffocating her with plastic wrap — bragging he killed Nadia and another girl the same way, staged as overdoses.
  • Unable to intervene physically, the Presence wakes Tyler, who tackles Ryan; both crash through the bedroom window and fall to their deaths.
  • Rebekah later senses the Presence at a mirror and sees Tyler in the reflection — his spirit was displaced in time, and had come back to save his sister.
Ending explained (full spoilers)
  • The Presence is Tyler — after his death. The ghost we follow for the whole film is Tyler's spirit, displaced backwards in time. The opening shot of the Presence roaming the empty house happens after the ending: it's Tyler's spirit arriving in the house before the family ever moves in. His existence is a closed loop.
  • The medium's clues pay off. Lisa says the Presence may experience time non-linearly and is there to "prevent a future event" — that event is Ryan's murder of Chloe. Every earlier "haunting" was protective, not hostile: closing Chloe's door during the drug talk, knocking down the shelf mid-kiss, spilling the first spiked drink.
  • Why it couldn't just stop Ryan. The Presence's physical influence wanes through the film — it goes from moving objects to barely being able to touch anything. So at the climax it can't fight Ryan directly; the one thing it can still do is wake Tyler, its own living self, who tackles Ryan through the window. Tyler dies saving Chloe, which is what creates the Presence in the first place.
  • The mirror scene. Rebekah — the mother who favored Tyler and dismissed Chloe all film — is the one who finally sees him in the reflection and realizes the truth. The favoritism plotline resolves in her grief. The Presence then leaves the house and ascends, its purpose completed.
  • Ryan the serial killer. The twist recontextualizes the "supernatural" story as a crime one: Nadia and the other girl's deaths weren't overdoses — Ryan suffocated them with plastic wrap and staged them. Chloe was next on his list; the ghost was the only one who knew.

My Thoughts (Spoilers)

  • I liked the atmosphere and no jump scares. The ghost's POV kept it tense, and the short length helped.
  • The story was just ok. The twist that Ryan was a serial killer was interesting, and reading the plot explanation afterwards made the ending land better.