Movie Review: The Presence

Synopsis: In this darkly romantic ghost story, a woman (Mira Sorvino) travels to an isolated cabin where she finds herself stalked by an apparition who has come to inhabit her space as his own. With the unexpected arrival of the woman's boyfriend, the dark spirit's haunting grows more obsessive. Soon the woman begins to exhibit weirdly irrational behavior as the thin line between sanity and possession begins to unravel.

Why do most people like ghost stories? Well, at least I know why I like them... to be spooked. Right off the bat this "ghost" is shown sitting in the house staring off into nothing. Which is what he keeps doing the whole movie pretty much. Yes, you see the ghost(s), but the other people in the film can't. It's not a bunch of spooky stuff going on, it's pretty much just the ghost standing around the house like a stoner. He's completely in human form, except for some bad powdery face make-up.

The other thing that really bothered me was that the heroine of the film is just a whiny pathetic loser. Guess what? She had a hard childhood so she's pouty and moody. You know who else had a hard childhood? The entire population. Suck it up and shut up. She treats her boyfriend so badly that I wanted him to just dump the hell out of her the entire time.

There's a bit that occurs a couple of times around their outhouse that gave me a startle and I thought it had some potential, but either I'm a moron who never figured out what the hell it even meant or it's just a wasted red herring. Too bad.

So the whole movie really ends up being a vehicle for a whiny, bitchy woman sorting out her domestic problem, while a few ghosts stand around here and there. Ghosts that look like people. Standing. Staring. Not spooking.

In a word... boring.

3/10