Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Presence’ Was So Intense That Some Sundance Viewers Walked Out: ‘I Cannot Take This Stress’
variety.comStephen Rodrick The not-so-secret fact about premieres is that the actors rarely watch, usually ducking out when the lights go down.
They spend the film’s duration smoking cigarettes and reciting the cinema’s version of the serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, i.e.
the director’s predilection to use my worst take.” That was not the case at Sundance’s world premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s “Presence,” a ghostly thriller about the Payne family, a bougie clan with a significant number of problems including a spectral, uh, presence that could be friend or foe.
On multiple trips to the washroom—blast the diuretic qualities of Diet Mountain Dew–I spied the entire cast watching the film with edge-of-the-seat anxiety, much like the rest of the theatre. (There were a couple of walkouts in the otherwise rapturous audience, one who whispered, ‘I cannot take this stress so late at night.”).
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