Stephen Soderbergh’s new film is about a haunted house – from the perspective of the ghost doing the haunting.

In Presence, the Oscar-winning director (Sex, Lies and Videotape, Erin Brockovich) makes the audience a witness as a family moves into their new home and becomes convinced they are not the only ones there, but we are seeing the proceedings from the POV of the mysterious entity haunting the place.

There before the family moves in, the “presence” sees the family’s most intimate moments, including how teenaged Chloe (Callina Liang) is treated (indifferently) by the rest of her family. The entity decides it needs something from the family, and plots to achieve that goal.

Soderbergh got the idea from the movie, shot entirely in a Cranford, New Jersey town, from his own experience living in a house where a young woman was rumored to have murdered her mother.

Presence also stars Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, Chris Sullivan, Eddy Maday and West Mulholland. David Koepp wrote the screenplay and Julie M. Anderson and Ken Meyer produced it.

Soderbergh’s next film is Black Bag, a spy thriller starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, also written by Koepp. Focus Features will distribute that film.

Neon picked up Presence after it wowed audiences at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Neon is the studio behind Nicolas Cage’s creepy Longlegs, in theaters now, and Cuckoo, starring Dan Stevens and Hunter Schafer, which opens Friday.

Presence will be present in theaters beginning January 17th, 2025.