Presence

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.

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.

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. :)

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.

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.