Presence

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.

A troubled woman and her friend (?) go on a yacht to secure a business deal with a potential intimate partner (?) and there's ghosts also.

It's almost like people had ideas for cool-looking shots, and tried to weave ideas in between those shots. The events that are referenced on screen, or what would be called "the story, "in some other movies were extremely confusing, and kind of unrelated, other than they occur to the same person. There is some domestic violence, there are some nightmares, maybe there's ghosts, there is a trip in a beautiful yacht, in a beautiful location, then other things happen. Props to the other review that gave this a highre score for being on a boat. I give terrible movies higher scores when they are shot in beautiful nature.

This was shot well, with professional audio equipment, and the acting wasn't off-putting. It wasn't great, but it probably wasn't strickly bad. Overall, money was spent well on this movie. The whole point of it is just weird and incomprehensible. What was this about? Ghosts?

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.

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.

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. :)