'Opus' and the "Don't Worry Darling, Get Out!" Phenomenon

Opus is a movie with an identity crisis, but that's not because of its central conflict.

To start this review, I want to address the “Don’t Worry About the Menu, Darling, Get Out!” phenomenon. While I can understand being annoyed about the recent uprise in “man vs. cult” films in modern horror, it’s not fair to use it as some sort of universal criticism to imply that any of these movies are inherently unoriginal or lesser for using one of the main seven types of conflict in literature (man vs. society), especially since it’s to the detriment of the genre’s broader history.

It’s especially frustrating because horror, more than many other genres, moves in cycles: paranoia-driven films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) flourished during the Cold War, vampire movies dominated the ‘80s in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, and The Blair Witch Project and The Ring embodied growing anxieties about technology in the early 2000s. Dismissing this ongoing trend of “man vs. cult” horror movies as nothing but an annoying trope and ignoring the cultural implications feels short-sighted; an individual fighting against a seemingly unstoppable group of brainwashed individuals reflect our contemporary anxieties about power imbalances, social control, politics, and systemic abuse.

It’s also hard to ignore that the films receiving the most dismissive criticism in this category tend to be directed by people of color. Where The Menu (dir. Mark Mylod) and Midsommar (dir. Ari Aster) were largely embraced despite releasing years after Get Out, Blink Twice (dir. Zoë Kravitz) and Opus (dir. Mark Anthony Green) are written off immediately, often before audiences even see them. The reason Get Out resonated like it did was because of its powerful themes about racism and white supremacy—completely recontextualizing the man vs. cult perspective—so to automatically dismiss other movies made and starring Black women feels like the very people complaining about these movies are completely missing the point of them.

To dismiss them all as repetitive is to ignore the way that each of those films recontextualizes those power dynamics to focus on different themes. The real question shouldn’t be whether these films resemble Get Out or The Menu, but whether they successfully innovate within their own thematic frameworks.

On its own, Opus is a film vying for a last minute twist, but in doing so, sacrifices the narrative and thematic integrity of the rest of its runtime.

It follows aspiring writer, Ariel (Ayo Edebiri), after she gets an invite to an exclusive listening party for the new album from elusive pop star Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich). She quickly picks up on the strange behavior of his cult-like following but struggles to convince the rest of the guests of her suspicions. While it flirts with biting satire, psychological horror, and dark comedy, it never quite finds a cohesive rhythm.

Ayo Edebiri definitely brought a lot of light to this movie, her charm carrying even some of the its more awkwardly written dialogue into jokes that actually land among audiences. I also particularly appreciated that her character was immediately tuned into the cult’s strange behaviors, even before arriving at Moretti's compound. Her everyman-style reactions were definitely the most consistently humorous part of the movie, but her varied strengths shined through in its thrilling moments. Her ability to carry a script, however, at times draws more attention to its weaknesses, especially with the serviceable but uninteresting performances from some of the others involved.

Beyond the performances, Opus bites off a lot in terms of themes: celebrity worship, artistic obsession, the dangers of blind admiration, cancel culture, and maybe even true crime. However, it doesn’t address any of them with any nuance until the film's final scenes. Where other movies in this subgenre rely on tension and a descent into madness, Opus makes no effort to conceal the cards in its hands. 

This issue might not have affected the movie if it had a stronger script, but as it is, most of the reveals, deaths, and other plot beats are so unsurprising that when they actually happen, they feel unnecessarily drawn out. It doesn’t help that Ariel and Maretti are the only characters in the movie that are even slightly developed; the supporting characters are so oblivious that their behavior veers into absurdity, so frustrating and baffling that it undercuts any tension Opus attempts to build. 

I’m not one for superficial comparisons between movies, but Opus does seem to borrow from both The Menu and Under the Silver Lake, with the same themes of sycophantic celebrity culture and the search for a fame-based conspiracy. However, it seems to fall apart in places where these movies showed their strengths.

The Menu made even its side characters feel human. While the majority of the plot and the screen time was given to Anya Taylor Joy’s Margot and Ralph Fiennes’ Chef Slowik, enough narrative care was given to the rest of the ensemble that their resignation to their own deaths made sense and was treated with the heaviness it deserves, even when it happened in such a bizarre fashion. 

Opus treats its ensemble as disposable; they not only act as if they’re completely outside of reality, but their deaths are both predictable and random. In a story like this one, it’s clear that the rest of the guests are going to be picked off one by one, but these deaths happen at random sporadically and then all at once, shining a glaring light on the back-loaded pacing. It also makes the other characters feel like pure meat fodder instead of valuable players in the story, especially when the twist makes them feel even more useless than before.

Opus also shares Under the Silver Lake’s conspiracy-driven paranoia. Sam (Andrew Garfield) is investigating a mystery about a fame-themed conspiracy in Hollywood, down to paranoid theories about subliminal messages in music and/or the whole concept of pop stars being fake. 

These themes about power and celebrities being “above” the average person permeate both movies, but where Silver Lake was layered in ambiguity and an eerie dream sort of logic, Opus is entirely too blunt. The vast majority of the movie is full of characters explaining their feelings and the meaning of the plot aloud for the audience instead of allowing them to meaningfully engage with it themselves until the very end. Even in the context of the cult, most of these situations come across as contrived and stilted rather than emerging naturally among the characters.

It seemed that Opus was a movie with an identity crisis, unsure if it wants to lean more into dark comedy or slasher horror, sweeping wide shots or zany editing. It isn’t committed to Ariel investigating the conspiracy or Moretti’s Tahani Al Jamil from The Good Place type of humor. The comedic timing is often off, deflating into awkwardness rather than enhancing absurdity, but any dread and tension from the horror side is quickly undercut by the wacky choices with editing and cinematography, distancing you from any building fear.

As it leans more into horror in the latter half of the movie, it becomes disappointingly predictable. Every major plot beat unfolds exactly as expected, and the supposed late-game “twist” is less of a shocking revelation and more of an excuse to patch up narrative weaknesses.

All in all, despite being a visually stylish and intermittently clever debut, it lacks the clarity and precision to stand out among all the great horror coming out this year. It feels unfocused, a collection of intriguing ideas that never fully come together. However, if you are an Ayo Edebiri fan, it is well worth it to watch just for her great performance (and beautiful wardrobe)!

'The Monkey': One Must Imagine Osgood Perkins Happy

Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey explores trauma and existentialism like a long walk off a short pier: fun until you notice there’s nothing underneath.

Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey is a movie with a lot on its mind—too much, maybe. So much that it all goes to “cherry pie” much like good old Uncle Chip. Of anyone in the world, I imagine I was the target audience: Final Destination 3 is one of my favorite movies of all time, I was a staunch Longlegs defender last year, and in my opinion, the best play ever written is Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I also love to pretentiously drop the word “Sisyphean” in conversation.

The Monkey gestures at all of those: gruesome deaths brought about by the cruel and impartial hand of fate, existential absurdity, the male loneliness epidemic, and possibly a crude sort of AIDS metaphor. But that is all it does: gesture, or remind you of better art that you could be watching or reading or thinking about.

So far, I am aware that I sound quite negative, but I didn’t necessarily have a bad time at this movie. I laughed at some of the jokes, and some of the deaths were pretty gnarly. It was perfectly entertaining but a let down that just feels like it gets worse and worse the longer I think about what could have been: all of my favorite things in the world but not done with an odd and sort of self-interested sense of humor.

The basic premise follows two twins, Hal and Bill (both played as adults by Theo James), who, as children, found a cursed, drum-beating monkey toy in their father’s closet (literally) that kills indiscriminately whenever it plays its little song. After destroying both of their lives, Hal and Bill escape the monkey, but not for long. Years later, Hal is an emotionally closed-off man, too afraid of his loved ones dying at random for the crime of being associated with him to form any meaningful relationships. As the trailer so eloquently states, “the monkey that likes killing [his] family” comes back, forcing him to connect with both his son, Petey (Colin O’Brien), and his estranged brother.

Hal and Bill are pretty spot on with the typical theatre of the absurd pair of characters a la Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: Bill is more connected with base urges of survival, anger, revenge, and lust while still being remarkably ineffective at accomplishing his goals (e.g., Rosencrantz, Estragon), and Hal is more prone to musings and overthinking to the point of essentially being incompatible with life (e.g., Guildenstern, Vladimir). 

Both characters are existential failures—meaning they perpetually play the role of the victim, blaming everything but their own choices for the way their lives turned out—but in different ways. Hal is a recluse along the lines of Alex or Clear from Final Destination, an existential failure in its most literal form: refusing to leave the house or connect with others out of fear of death. Bill, on the other hand, becomes addicted to playing God, constantly winding up the monkey in the hopes of killing the people who he believes ruined his life.

It’s a super interesting set up, especially for someone like me, who loves every piece of media I just discussed above, but The Monkey never commits to saying anything about it. Where, after Longlegs, I would find more and more as I further unraveled it, here, poking into this movie is like poking a balloon. It all blows up, and you realize there was never anything there but hot air.

The Monkey is a horror comedy, but I didn’t find much entertainment in either the horror or the comedy. It prides itself on the Final Destination comparisons, and they are apt, especially toward the beginning, but soon, the deaths lose all ounce of creativity. The opening scene is wacky and surreal, a tone I was hoping would be kept up throughout the rest of the movie, but it’s only downhill from there; eventually, you’ll realize that half of the deaths are just people blowing up in explosions of CGI blood. Final Destination thrives on the inevitable dread of death and the desperate, futile struggle against fate, so while it’s silly, it’s also genuinely thrilling to watch, and it has some of the most disgusting death scenes ever put to screen. 

The Monkey makes me think that Perkins saw Final Destination and didn’t see what I always thought was the most impressive part of it all: the build-up so excessive it becomes funny. The “how did someone possibly come up with this?” that inevitably goes through your mind while watching. The Monkey is a detached spectacle at its most lonely. 

Final Destination at least understands that, while you inevitably can’t have incredibly well-developed relationships between all those people who are going to die in insane ways, you can at least make your main characters interesting. The central relationship here is between Hal and Petey, his son who he essentially abandoned, but their dynamic changes on a dime. They both experience random and sporadic character development that amounts to the most unsatisfying ending of the year. Since the stakes are always so high (yet simultaneously so low since we know the three characters who have some semblance of a personality are safe at least until the end of the third act), the climax and these huge character-defining moments don’t feel as big—the world never ends, and, despite the nature of the movie, none of the main characters ever truly feel at risk—so really, who cares?

It’s impossible to separate The Monkey from Perkins’ history, and this is very intentional; both of his parents died tragically and suddenly. His father, Anthony Perkins, died of AIDS-related complications, and his mother, Berry Berenson, was on one of the planes that crashed during 9/11. There’s even a 9/11 joke in the movie, in case you didn’t already know that about him. That kind of self-referential morbidity is certainly a look into Perkins’ psyche: his obsession with fate, death, and repression all tying back to his family history.

A key pattern in the deaths in this movie is that they overwhelmingly target women who are sexually active or desirable to the male characters: the babysitter Bill had a crush on gets decapitated at hibachi, the woman in the bikini at the motel pool explodes, and the real estate agent flirting with Hal spontaneously combusts (explodes, again). Even those who aren’t literally desirable figures to the brothers still are connected with sex: their aunt and uncle are swingers, and cheerleaders are definitely the most objectified athletes out there, often depicted as nothing more than figures of a main male character’s desire, especially in older movies that seem to have inspired this one.

There’s this strange fixation that permeates this movie and Longlegs about sex as sin/death and fathers with deadly secrets that kill their wives and children. These details make The Monkey feel not just thematically confused (the only two factors breaking this formula being the death of the boys’ mother and the lack of death of Petey’s mother), but uncomfortably regressive. Perkins seems to be working through his own complicated feelings about his father’s sexuality in a way that reads as vaguely homophobic: being the gay parent is an inherent betrayal of one’s family (hence the death of Hal and Bill’s mother), and if we don’t laugh at people suddenly dying at random due to “misplaced” sexual desire (specifically sexual desire that doesn’t lead to the birth of a child, hence the survival of Petey’s mother), then we can’t live. It reminds me of people who go online and say that their “trauma made them funny”.

Don’t worry: the movie is also disappointing from a technical standpoint. Perkins has definitely found a niche with surreal, stylized horror like that in The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Longlegs (where it is certainly at its best), but here, his usual aesthetic is flattened by over reliance on shock humor. Where the cinematography in Longlegs contributed to the building of tension—peeking over shoulders or lagging slightly behind the protagonist—it feels almost out of place in The Monkey, where there is no sense of dread to be found. For a movie so preoccupied by the weight of death, not one single kill is anything beyond that: a kill. The gore is excessive and meaningless. It’s all gross and silly because if you’re not laughing, Perkins doesn’t have anything left to offer you.

Due to the lack of emotional resonance, Theo James in the dual lead role is serviceable but unmemorable. The movie is so surreal and absurdist that it feels completely untethered to reality. Where the plain horror of Longlegs grounded the magic or the mundane repetition of the coin flip in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead plants you firmly in the moment through the simple feeling of the passage of time, The Monkey floats off wherever the wind blows. The inability to let go of its forced humor prevents any real character depth for anyone involved. 

When the movie finally lands on its closing statement, which is essentially another version of “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” (from Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, a story that has stuck with me for the better part of my life), it feels cheap and half-baked, perhaps because we were never burdened with pushing any sort of metaphorical boulder up any sort of metaphorical hill. It never weighed anything, so there’s no catharsis when it’s gone.

The Monkey lets its own ideas float away, overstuffed and overconfident in its humor. It wants to be an existential statement, a horror comedy, a Final Destination homage, a commentary on fate, repression, generational trauma, having a gay dad, or even the alt-right pipeline (if you squint hard enough), but there’s no glue to stick it all together. If you want fate and existential horror and crazy deaths, just wait for the Final Destination: Bloodlines to come out in May. If you love the idea of caricatures of men comedically dealing with existential absurdity, pull out a copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (or watch it on streaming as there is a movie adaptation). If you like Osgood Perkins, just rewatch Longlegs or wait for Keeper in October. There’s nothing to be found here that isn’t done better elsewhere.

None of this is to say that you’ll have the worst time, but make sure you go with a group of friends who will make you laugh no matter what’s on the screen. Maybe then watching it will feel less like pushing a perfectly round boulder and trying to get it to stay on top of a perfectly round hill top. Or flipping a coin hundreds of times for it to only ever land on heads. But if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome, I can’t let you walk into The Monkey thinking you’ll get anything but exactly the same thing you’ve seen a million times over.

★★★☆☆

5 out of 10

Check out The Monkey in theaters.

 

Fall in Love with 'Companion'

Companion is a nasty, funny, and sharp commentary on "nice guys" that proves that a movie can be humorous and scary at the same time.

I’ve never been one to particularly enjoy horror comedies, so when I do, it’s a rare exception. My biggest issue with the genre often lies in its imbalance: many horror comedies lean too heavily to either “horror” or “comedy”. Some feel like slapstick movies dressed up with monsters (usually zombies, à la Zombieland or Little Monsters) and extreme gore (think Evil Dead II and the “splatstick” subgenre), while others come across as simply meta horror movies—satirical, sure, but not laugh-out-loud funny (like Scream or Cabin in the Woods). Of course, none of those movies are bad (Evil Dead is literally my favorite horror franchise), but they don’t feel like true “horror comedy” to me. The best examples of the genre strike a delicate balance, blending humor and tension so seamlessly that you’re laughing one moment and hiding your face the next. Companion achieves just that.

Directed by newcomer Drew Hancock and produced by Barbarian director Zach Cregger, Companion follows Iris (Sophie Thatcher), an AI sex robot crudely referred to as a “fuckbot” and technically referred to as a “companion”, as she navigates a weekend trip hosted by Sergey (Rupert Friend), a local rich guy, alongside her boyfriend, Josh (Jack Quaid), and his friends: aloof and edgy Kat (Megan Suri), comic relief Eli (Harvey Guillén), and Eli’s doting boyfriend, Patrick (Lukas Gage). Iris struggles to connect with the group, shy and awkward for reasons she cannot wrap her head around. The trip spirals out of control when Sergey makes an inappropriate advance, devolving into a chaotic, high-stakes cat-and-mouse game as wacky as it is stressful where the roles of predator and prey get more and more blurry as the story progresses.

The film’s casting is one of its biggest strengths. Sophie Thatcher shines as Iris, delivering a performance that evolves alongside her character. She starts out the movie closer to “factory settings”, an overly emotional, lovestruck automaton, grappling with feelings she can’t quite articulate or control. There’s a sense of inexperience and helplessness about her. Her feelings—fear, heartbreak, guilt, love—are raw and childlike like she’s experiencing them for the first time, and she visibly seeks reassurance and validation from Josh. As the story unfolds, she grows more accustomed to her emotions, comes more into her own, and learns to keep her cards close to her chest in a way she clearly never knew before. She fights for her own “survival” all the while trying to figure out what it truly means to be alive and autonomous. It’s a nuanced performance that feels authentic, and all of her progress—her newfound maturity and independence—feels earned. If you were to put clips of her performance at the beginning of the movie and at the end, they would seem like two different characters, totally separated by the weight of experience.

Jack Quaid’s portrayal of Josh is equally effective, if familiar. The role is reminiscent of his characters in The Boys (Hughie’s hapless charm) and Scream (Richie’s hapless-charm-turned-incel-obnoxiousness)—overall, he’s a seemingly endearing, nerdy nice guy with a dark edge. I think his recent appearances in both The Boys and the Novocaine trailer emphasize the “endearing” and obscure the “incel” enough to allow his character some plausible deniability, leaving you unsure of what he will bring to the table because it could be so either-or; it’s almost the opposite of Bill Skårsgard’s appearance as a shockingly good guy in Barbarian. Regardless, he is evidently typecast for a reason, moving between romantic charm, deranged entitlement, and raw menace with ease.

I enjoyed seeing Megan Suri play a more sharp, no-nonsense character with Kat after previously enjoying her softer, preppier roles in It Lives Inside, Missing, and Never Have I Ever, and I hope she continues picking up all kinds of varied roles since she seems to do great work in all of them. Harvey Guillén provides intermittent comic relief as Eli, though not all his jokes land. Lukas Gage also impresses with a softer yet more imposing performance, which seems to be becoming a specialty of his (such as his brief but effective role in Smile 2).

In terms of story, Barbarian’s influence is clear. One of my favorite moments of that movie is when it abruptly cuts from a brutal murder to Justin Long casually driving down the highway, sunglasses on, singing along to Donavan’s “Riki Tiki Tavi” on the radio: a quick switch that brings you from the pinnacle of fear to a moment of catharsis so fast that the confusion adds to the humor. Companion bounces back and forth in a similar way, moving seamlessly between laugh-out-loud moments, genuine emotion, and nail-biting tension.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of these tones are mutually exclusive, however, as the movie often uses these differently charged moments to elicit more emotion in the viewer later on. One specific gag that occurs repeatedly throughout the movie centers on the idea of cheesy “meet-cutes” between the characters. These moments are always associated with joy, romance, or humor, building a positive association with them from the beginning, but later in the story, another recollection of the moment is almost imposing or intimidating, and the intrusive change of the memory makes it feel almost like a violation. At the end of the movie, when the balance is restored, reminding you of the humor those moments always held, it’s nostalgic, familiar, and satisfying to us in the same way it is for the character. Literally the same scene played out the same way three times—all the same music and dialogue—and yet it manages to make you feel three completely different ways.

The tone switches never feel jarring: one moment, a character is kicking their way out of a car, and you can almost feel the ticking of a clock with each hit of their feet against the glass, the threat growing closer, closer, closer, but within a minute, you find yourself laughing at a familiar comedic beat with a dumb-as-rocks sheriff (played by Marc Menchaca). The kind of tonal layering and variation is a hallmark of the film’s finely tuned screenplay, ensuring that the humor never undercuts the horror and the scares never make the jokes feel out of place: a true-blue overlap of fear and comedy.

Also like Barbarian, Companion offers sharp feminist commentary without feeling excessively didactic or condescending. The film explores the objectification of women through the lens of AI, examining how men blame women for their own insecurities and shortcomings. As their superficial charms give way to entitlement and manipulation, the satire, though occasionally on the nose, becomes both biting and deeply unsettling because it never feels very far removed from reality. No part of me doubts that this is how men would behave with these “companions” because they don’t behave any better with living, breathing women today. We’re reminded yet again of the ugly underbelly of so-called “nice guys”: layered with a lack of self-awareness, an over-reliance on the blind devotion and forgiveness of the women in their lives, and hatred of women who refuse to give in to what they want.

At its heart, the film explores themes of codependency, self-discovery, and autonomy, particularly through Iris’s journey to assert her independence after being trapped in a less-than-equal relationship with Josh. She refuses to limit herself for the sake of his success and happiness or go down for his mistakes. The story underscores how societal norms and male entitlement can stifle women’s freedom, often forcing them into dependency on partners who readily discard them when convenient. 

All in all, Companion is a cutting, scary, and truly funny horror comedy. Sophie Thatcher excels (as she usually does in horror roles, frankly) and elevates this to a must-watch. If Companion is what The Sun envisioned when, a decade ago, they speculated about women preferring robot companions over men by 2025, I’m all for it. See it in theaters on January 31st, 2025.

★★★★☆

8.2 out of 10

Check out Companion in theaters.

'Presence' Will Haunt You

Presence is a poignant exploration of how grief, love, and regret can linger.

Presence was the biggest surprise of a movie I’ve seen in a long time. Leading up to its release, all I’ve heard were people complaining about how Neon chooses to advertise its horror movies, something along the lines of “not every horror movie should be advertised as the scariest movie ever; you saw what happened with Longlegs,” all the while Longlegs was the highest grossing indie horror movie in the last decade. Regardless, everyone was saying that Presence in particular was more of a family drama than horror.

Personally, I think those people have a very limited perception of what horror can be. While its first-person perspective gimmick, shot from the point of view of a ghost haunting a house, invites comparisons to Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature (2024) or David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2018), I think the closest thematic and emotional connection is to Joel Anderson’s Lake Mungo (2008). 

Lake Mungo is yet another horror movie that has received middling reviews for “not being scary” due to its slow-pace and lack of traditional jumpscares or gore. Formatted as a found-footage mockumentary, it follows the Palmer family’s search for meaning after the death of sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer. They await and find ghosts, real and fake, contact mediums, try to solve the “mystery” of Alice’s life, but ultimately must make peace with the fact that she is gone. In the movie’s most famous moment, her family recovers a strange video in which Alice seemingly sees her own future corpse while on a trip to Lake Mungo. It’s a somber and gloomy depiction of the horror of being unseen, of a life unfulfilled

Presence flips this idea on its head, almost as if it is imagining what could have happened if Alice’s family had started searching for her while she was still alive. The story follows Chloe (Callina Liang), a young woman grieving the loss of her best friend, which has left her estranged from her brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) and emotionally distant from her mother, Rebecca (Lucy Liu). Their father, Chris (Chris Sullivan), holds the family together as they move into a new house to start fresh. However, Chloe begins to witness supernatural phenomena driven by the ghost already haunting the place, our point-of-view character. This review will contain spoilers, so be careful if you’re thinking of seeing it!

From the very first scene of the movie, the ghost is imbued with confusion and shyness, retreating when anyone so much as turns in its direction and running back to hide in the closet when overwhelmed. It looks around the house it appeared in like it doesn’t recognize anything at all, draped in a sense of melancholia and helplessness. It only gains a sense of comfort and warmth when it discovers Chloe, following her through the house, tidying her books when she studies too much and growing aggravated when she shows interest in Ryan (West Mulholland), a boy it clearly distrusts. It watches her with a sense of tenderness, and you think that if it could reach out and comfort her in her times of grief, it would; it yearns to.

As the story progresses, Ryan’s true intentions become more and more clear through his increasingly violent and predatory behavior. In one of its few moments of deliberate action, the ghost foils his attempt to drug Chloe by knocking over the drink he brought her. It also reveals itself to the family in other ways, ransacking Tyler’s room in a fit of rage after he makes a sexist comment about a girl in his class.

The family soon learns through a medium that the ghost is confused and stuck in time, perhaps from the future. This moment—the ghost’s confusion, its anxiety of being seen, the fact that it is a ghost from a death that has not yet happened—is what brings about the sense of dread that permeates the rest of the movie, especially as Ryan’s face pops up again and again. Like when Alice Palmer saw her own bloated corpse on the lake, you are hit with this sense of inevitability: something terrible is on the horizon, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It weighs heavy on your shoulders, especially when Ryan comes over again while Chloe’s parents are out, promising to get Tyler “out of the way” so they can spend some time alone together.

The movie spells out what is coming, and the ghost watches, unable to intervene, as Ryan drugs Tyler’s drink. It stares, looks right at it, anger and helplessness more pronounced than ever before as Tyler falls asleep and Ryan heads upstairs. The inevitability is horrible, nearly unbearable to watch, but you must. 

Chloe falls unconscious soon enough, and Ryan begins to rant at her about control—I gave you control, and now I’m taking it back—and admits that he is responsible for the death of Chloe’s friends. He begins to taunt her by covering her mouth with plastic wrap and pulling it away right before she runs out of breath, over and over and over, and the ghost rushes downstairs, screaming through the void as much as it can, and it succeeds, waking Tyler.

Tyler rushes upstairs and shoves Ryan off of Chloe, and the fight between the two leads to them both falling out of the window and dying, forcing the viewer to the realization that it was Tyler, Chloe’s brother, who has been the ghost all along.

This realization completely changes how we view the events of the rest of the movie; subconsciously, the ghost knew what Ryan was going to do, so every glare, every interruption, every moment it stood there and watched Chloe breathe, now is colored by a sinking sense of regret. The two siblings never got along while Tyler was alive, to the point where their father asked Tyler something along the lines of: “Would it kill you to stand up for your sister for once?”

At the end of the movie, Chloe is no longer able to see the ghost, but her mother is. She follows it to the mirror in the living room and sees Tyler’s reflection standing there. She collapses in a moment of grief: “It’s your brother!” She cries. “He came back to save you!”

When watching this movie, I believe that you are forced to feel those very same feelings that Alice felt seeing her own ghost for the first time: the dread, the hopelessness, the unavoidable and imminent presence of death, right in front of you. You feel it getting closer, and closer, and closer in what was at first at crawl that quickly becomes a sprint. The moment of climax is quick, barely ten seconds long, when Tyler crashes through the door and knocks himself and Ryan out of the window, and it hits like a punch to the gut: realization and catharsis and relief and terror all at once. It’s a brilliant moment. The tension is gone but the tragedy remains, as loud and as painful as ever.

The movies I’ve always found most horrifying are those about a life left unlived, unseen by anyone. Understanding is a feeling I value above all else—I’ve previously stated that it’s what I love about film, the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes—and this movie gave it to me on a silver platter. It’s almost a more kindhearted version of Lake Mungo; where Alice died alone, unseen by anyone, unable to find her purpose let alone fulfill it, Tyler was able to change the past. He was able to save his sister, and his family was allowed to say goodbye. Chloe was seen and understood by her family, beautiful and tragic all at once.

Technically, the movie is outstanding. The first-person perspective captures the ghost’s emotions—its warmth, anger, and confusion—with an aching clarity. The score is operatic and evocative, amplifying the tension and sorrow. The one-location setup feels natural thanks to a screenplay that keeps the characters moving and interacting in believable ways. While some of the dialogue—particularly Ryan’s rants and Chloe’s introspections—can feel overwrought, it fits their characters and the heightened emotional tone of the story.

All in all, I wept at this movie. It was everything that always makes me cry, really: the horror of Lake Mungo—which is, to me, the scariest movie of all time—and the addition of a fraught sibling dynamic. I definitely see why some people wouldn’t like this, and it will probably be the same crowd of people who didn’t like Lake Mungo, wishing for more gore and scares and death, and that’s fair enough. To each their own. But for anyone willing to sit with its quiet, deliberate pace, I can’t recommend this movie enough.

★★★★★
9.5 out of 10
Go see Presence in theaters today!