presence

Although his career is now Hollywood limbo, you have to give M. Knight Shyamalan credit for delivering the most original ghost story is the past 20 years. It’s easy to scare folks with loud noises and cheap gags, but The Sixth Sense got under your skin with its mix of the supernatural and the spiritual. Which is exactly what The Presence attempts to do, it its own misguided way. Mira Sorvino plays a psychologically scarred writer who isolates herself in a cabin to work on her book deal with her own childhood trauma. But - as the audience is made aware of in the first shot - she shares this space with an uncommunicative spirit (Shane West) who seems equally trapped in his own depressing after-life. Director Tom Provost takes the risky (but ultimately rewarding) approach of shooting his ghost as if he’s just another character in the room. Which makes it all the more jarring when another spirit arrives, one that seems to be whispering nasty thoughts into our heroine’s ear. The Presence is a magnificently quiet film. In fact, there’s not one word of spoken dialogue in the first 15 minutes. Once people start talking, the movie becomes less interesting. And Provost, a first-time director, has a hard time making the big revelations feel suitably big…or revealing. Yet the film earns a certain amount of respect for trying something outside of the box in a genre that’s usually content to be buried six-feet-under. Extras includes a commentary, storyboards and Making Of.