Presence
2022
Action / Horror

Presence
2022
Action / Horror
Plot summary
Two young business partners are invited to a week-long yachting voyage with a potential investor. At night, Jennifer's dreams begin to bleed into reality as the others realize that Jennifer may have unknowingly brought something on-board.
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
Variety Grab Bag
pretty but meandering and confusing
It's well-lit, the scenery and set are lovely, but the plot uses what seems like a lot of genre red herrings that don't pay off because nothing is delved into, explored, or explained enough for the developments to be impactful.
There's not enough exposition or establishing of the characters in the beginning, and then things seem to be hitting on different horror tropes, which can work well for keeping an audience in suspense. The problem is that none of it is explored in a way that makes it compelling; it just moves on to the next trope without any explanation.
Maybe they were trying to rely on the audience being genre-savvy to figure things out, but there's so little commitment to anything that it all ends up shallow and unsatisfying. Then at the end, what is supposed to be a major reveal falls flat because there's so little context actually established that it makes the clues useless.
It's a shame--I usually really like horror set on a boat because the claustrophobia and lack of options tends to easily build dread or desperation, but this movie didn't even effectively utilize that.