Breaking Down the Haunting Twist at the End of Steven Soderbergh’s Presence

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Presence.

Presence may not be your typical horror movie, but that doesn’t mean it won’t leave you a bit shaken up.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Contagion) from a screenplay by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Panic Room), the haunted house chiller is shot entirely from the point of view of a spirit trapped inside a suburban home (i.e., Soderbergh with a handheld camera). Presence, now in theaters, opens with the ghostly entity observing as a family of four—married couple Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their two teenage children, Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang)—tour and subsequently move into the residence. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The presence initially makes itself known only to Chloe and appears to be drawn to her, suggesting it may be the ghost of her best friend Nadia, who died from an apparent overdose a few months earlier. As the spirit continues to observe increasingly tense family interactions, we watch as Chloe’s grief over Nadia and insistent talk of a ghost is met with derision and cruelty from her brother, contempt from her mother (who openly prefers star athlete Tyler to a near-creepy extent), and compassion from her sympathetic father, who is the first person to take her claims about the presence seriously.

Eventually, Chris calls in Lisa (Natalie Woolams-Torres), the sister of their real estate agent (Julia Fox), to investigate the mysterious goings-on using her supposed “second sight.” After looking directly into the camera, Lisa says she believes the presence is confused and doesn’t know why it’s there. In a major hint at what’s to come, she also explains that time works differently in the spirit world, meaning the ghost’s presence in the house could be tied to either a past or future event.

While all this is going on, Chloe begins secretly hanging out and hooking up with Tyler’s friend Ryan (West Mulholland), a sinister jock who worms his way into her good graces as a shoulder to cry on. We witness one nefarious incident in which Ryan drugs Chloe’s drink while she’s in the shower, presumably with the intention of sexually assaulting her, but is foiled by the spirit knocking the glass over. With Chloe unaware of Ryan’s true nature, she agrees to a plan he proposes to guarantee them some alone time while her parents are out of town for the weekend by getting Tyler drunk and slipping him something to make him fall asleep.

What is the twist in Presence?

On the night the plan is supposed to play out, Ryan does as he says and waits until Tyler is passed out on the couch before heading upstairs to Chloe’s room. After she tells him she would now prefer to just have a quiet night by herself, he convinces her to have one drink (that he’s already drugged) and she also passes out. It’s then that things really get scary.

After putting a piece of plastic wrap over her mouth and nose to obstruct her breathing, Ryan confesses that he was the one responsible for the deaths of both Nadia and another girl from their school who seemingly died from an overdose, and that he killed those two girls in the same way. However, he doesn’t account for the now-frantic spirit racing downstairs and doing everything in its power to wake up Tyler.

Once he comes to, Tyler seems to immediately understand his sister is in trouble and stumbles upstairs to her room. He tackles Ryan through the second-story window and they both fall to their deaths, saving Chloe in the process. In the movie’s final sequence, we watch as a grieving Rebekah, Chris, and Chloe prepare to leave the house for good. But as Rebekah takes one last look in the living room mirror, she sees Tyler staring back at her and screams in anguish.

The implication of this final reveal seems to be that Tyler was the presence all along, having been trapped in a paradoxical time loop of sorts where he had to die to save his sister but also had to already be dead in order for the events that lead to her rescue to play out. In any case, best not to overthink the logistics of all this if you want to fully take in what’s ultimately a pretty poignant gut punch.