If you loved Longlegs and think Cuckoo looks pretty solid too, you’ll be happy to learn that NEON will be staying in the arena of suspense and horror for the foreseeable. In January 2025, Presence is coming from Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Magic Mike), and it could be unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
The pitch is simple: This is a supernatural entity story… from the point of view of the supernatural entity. We’ve had experiments with the format, such as the Paranormal Activity series, but this type of horror tale had never been told (at least in a mainstream feature) from the other perspective, and that alone might be enough to get many horror fanatics and casual moviegoers into the cinema. And if you were wondering who wrote this: It’s Jurassic Park’s David Koepp, a veteran Steven Spielberg collaborator, who’s also helped shape the next Jurassic World movie.
Earlier this year, we also had the opportunity to watch In a Violent Nature in theaters, a slasher movie narrated from the killer’s POV. While it wasn’t super groundbreaking, it was a welcome change of pace, so maybe Presence can replicate that for the admittedly overdone ‘haunted house’ subgenre. There seems to be a demand for small twists on classic scary formulas as of late, so these two might be the start of a bigger movement towards reinventing horror for younger generations.
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