Presence (I) (2022) User Reviews

Technically competent, impossible to recommend.

[Victor_Fallon · 3/10 · 20 November 2022]

A woman called Jen suffers from weird dreams as her professional and personal life hits the skids. Then she sees a ghost or something. Or was it another dream? Then she's on a yacht. Then she has a panic attack. Then she's fine. Then she's going to be a millionaire. Then the ghost again! Oh, it's gone. Never mind.

It's a badly written script with a main character that we know nothing about. The movie doesn't explain who she is or why we should care, so it's very hard to maintain interest.

Jenna Lyng Adams shows tons of potential as a lead but she's too attractive to play a down-and-out loser with no friends. Nevertheless, she puts in some decent work. The rest of the cast is ok too.

It's well directed, visually, but terribly directed when it comes to characters and diction. Every line is croaked and fried in that 'Instagram Mumblecore' way, forcing me to use subtitles.

Then, just as you're about to smash the tv to bits in a fit of boredom-induced rage, the script decides to get out of bed and have a go at tackling some broader ideas, while conveniently forgetting about the gaping chasms in the plot. Then it stops.

Ending was good

[zack_gideon · 5/10 · 29 October 2022]

I don't know about much of this film. The motivation, the plot, the reason it was even made. I honestly was pretty confused the entire time. Most of it was filmed on a nice boat so I liked that. I love nice boats. That being said....

Like wtf. What was the plot? I don't know. The lead character, well she is a 10 and she is a good actor. But besides that the dialogue is pretty bad and there's too many crap scenes like the ambien one. Nice foreshadow....not. Poor writing. It's pretty amateur overall BUT...

The ending is great. And it doesn't really answer any questions but the last 10 minutes are the entire point of the film. And I guarantee the director would nod his head. Nice effort although I still don't understand the plot.....The end. At least this review has an ending you'll understand.

pretty but meandering and confusing

[crimsonlh · 3/10 · 31 January 2023]

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.

Don't bother with this one...

[paul_haakonsen · 2/10 · 30 October 2022]

As I opted to sit down and watch "Presence" here late in 2022, it was because I stumbled upon the movie. Sure, I had never even heard about this movie from director Christian Schultz prior to sitting down to watch it, so I didn't know what to expect here, nor did I know what I was in for aside from what I read in the synopsis.

Writers Peter Ambrosio and Christian Schultz swung wide and miss horribly with "Presence". The movie's plot was dull, mundane and downright non-existing. I managed to suffer through 49 minutes of the 82 minutes that the movie ran for. Then I just gave up and tossed the towel in the ring out of sheer and utter boredom. Nothing, and I mean that literally, of any interest had happened on the screen in those minutes, and thus there was no sense in prolonging the suffering of watching.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Presence", but I will say that it was a shame that they virtually had nothing to work with in terms of script, storyline, character gallery or dialogue.

For a horror movie then "Presence" was just not worth the effort. The only thing scary in the movie was how utterly boring and pointless the movie was. And believe you me when I say that I have zero interest in returning to watch the rest of this boring movie.

My rating of "Presence" lands on a very generous two out of ten stars. And it is the production value of the movie that brings it up to two, because the storyline was just a dumpster fire.

Don't waste your time on this one.

[srprimeau · 1/10 · 7 November 2022]

This is by far the worst movie I ever seen. There was absolutely no plot. There was no connection from beginning to end. The ending didn't tie anything together. Nothing made sense. I will never get that time back. I kept waiting for something to make sense. Nothing ever did. It was like the writer had a bunch of ideas and smashed them all into one movie with out tying a point together.

Take my advice don't press play. Waste of money on production of this film. I can honestly say worst movie I have ever watched. Save your time and don't press play. And if you are tempted by this to see for yourself just remember I told you so!

A worthless genre effort without anything much of interest happening

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 1/10 · 19 November 2022]

After her business partner goes missing, a woman finds that she has mysteriously reappeared and brought an investor onboard for their company which will require them to travel to Puerto Rico to finalize it, forcing them on his yacht for the trip where she believes a dark spirit is haunting her.

There's almost nothing worthwhile to be had with this one. The main issue here is that this is so mysterious and underwhelming that it strains the viewers' interest in what's going on. Since there's nothing about what's troubling her or if it's malicious in any context, with so few scenes involving anything scary or thrilling happening until so late in what's going on, this becomes barely worthwhile and incredibly frustrating. The characters aren't that interesting, the setup has very little immersion about what's happening, and it only serves as a means of getting these people onto the boat. That wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't anything happening to further what's going on with the haunting storyline. This has very little build-up or investment in her condition as very little was happening to keep this setup going along with so little actual genre content throughout this point. The focus on her rekindling their relationship with her business partner, the antics between them and the guy on the boat, and the implications that arise from these issues manage to hold the film's attention for so much of the running time that the final few minutes when it finally becomes a genre effort with the reveal of what's happening. However, it's too little too late to save it.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, Brief Nudity, and Violence.

Variety Grab Bag

[RedQueenIMDB · 4/10 · 8 June 2023]

There wasn't much info on this title in the way of reviews, so I checked it out. It dragged out like a psycho-thriller for the first 2/3 - with gorgeous model actresses - then started acting like it was a demonic possession cult conspiracy. But only for a scene or 2. Then it pulled a 100% derivative ripoff of another movie in the end. But it never did decide what it was gonna be, which deprived it of any potential atmosphere. The production quality was high, but there was no cohesion in the writing or direction, & never any explanations or continuity in the script. Could have been really good. But it wasn't.

Strange but worth it

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 21 August 2022]

After leaving New York after a mental breakdown, Jennifer (Jenna Lyng Adams) learns from her friend Sam (Alexandria DeBerry) that at least her business life is going well, as billionaire David (Dave Vacis) wants them to work on the design of his new product. He invites her to his private yacht, but that's when she starts being confronted with visions of violence. Is she possessed? Is this how her anxiety shows itself? And is anyone safe from her?

Director Christian Schultz, who wrote the script with Peter Ambrosio, embraces the form of giallo that is not as much about black gloved killers. Instead, it's the film in which a female protagonist doubts every single thing in her reality, as she's an unreliable narrator to herself. Jennifer dreams of being stalked by a shadowy figure that never quite reveals itself; she often awakens to situations that she's escalated but can't control.

With just minutes left, a character says, "Uou look like you have a lot of questions. I'd like to provide you with some answers." The answers that we get may not solve the mystery of this movie, but the idea that our perception of the world is at odds with what others experience is a universal one; this movie pushes that idea to the limit.

I enjoyed this one

[LindaD1 · 7/10 · 22 December 2022]

I've always said that every movie is worth a watch, regardless of the review(s) because you never know if you're skipping a diamond in the rough.

This may be one of those movies that you just have to watch and make your own decision. Seems that people will either love or hate this movie.

I REALLY enjoyed it. It was hard to predict how it was going to end, and it kept me interested the whole movie. Not boring or a slow burn. Well written, and acting was great.

Give it a watch, I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you like it (like I did), make sure to get on here and give it a good review. :)