Weekend Watch: Presence, Star Trek: Section 31
A Soderbergh ghost story and a new Trek adventure
Image Credit: Neon
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, where I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Steven Soderbergh conjures up a haunted house and Michelle Yeoh is back on Star Trek duty. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite, Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite and Blue Sky: @jammerwhite.bsky.social
In my Pop Culture Pick column this week (have a read if you’ve yet to see it), I celebrated the genre-hopper that is Steven Soderbergh, who never met a filmic technique he didn’t want to experiment with.
He’s back in formal experimentation mode for this week’s Presence, which is ostensibly the story of a family (played by Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang and Eddy Maday) who move into a new home, only to slowly discover that the spacious suburban dwelling they’ve recently purchased comes with an unexpected extra: a spirit roaming the halls and rooms.
Unlike other movies, the ghost is the point of view camera here, we the audience are almost voyeurs as the family deals with their issues.
Liang’s already haunted Chloe, still mired in grief following a friend’s suicide, is the first to notice the spirit, though she initially has a hard time convincing anyone else that something is amiss; especially since the ghost doesn’t go out of its way to scare, it almost seems more curious than aggressive.
As we learn more about the ruptured familial dynamic –– and make no mistake, this is much more family drama than horror movie –– the reasons for the ghostly presence become clear.
Soderbergh gets good work out of the cast –– Liang in particular is a standout, but it does often happen that the clever dynamics overwhelm any real chance at emotion. This is a chilly film, often too engrossed in finding interesting things to do with the camera, while veteran writer David Koepp’s script sometimes dips into cliché.
Still, putting you in mind of David Lowey’s meditative A Ghost Story, Presence still has a lot to recommend it if you prefer your manifestations without lashings of gore.
Presence is in US and UK cinemas now.
Image Credit: Paramount+
How exactly do you get Academy Award Winner Michelle Yeoh to appear in a made-for-TV Star Trek movie. Well, it helps that A) Paramount secured her services for Star Trek: Discovery years before she nabbed her shiny trophy and B) she clearly relishes playing former Terran Emperor Philippa Georgiou, who we first met on that series.
While this is the first Trek movie to arrive since Star Trek Beyond way back in 2016, the fact that it’s essentially a retooled version of an aborted series featuring Yeoh’s Georgiou does tend to limit it a little, and a premiere on streaming service Paramount+ perhaps reduces its impact.
Yet when it’s letting Yeoh either kick arse or be snarky, it certainly provides some entertainment value.
A handy prologue re-introduces us to Yeoh’s character via a scene from her younger days in the terrifying Terran Empire (a mirror universe introduced all the way back in the original Star Trek), where teens are dragooned to fight it out to see who will become the new Emperor.
Flash-forward to now, and Georgiou is hanging out under cover for the slightly dodgy espionage wing of Starfleet, Section 31, playing the role of a club-owning crime boss. She’s recalled to duty to help track down a new galaxy-threatening superweapon which, as it turns out, she ordered to be built back in her tyrannical ruler days. Awkward…
To aid in tracking down this doohickie, she has to work with a rag-tag assortment of operatives including Deltan seductress Melle (Humberly González), lunkheaded cyborg Zeph (Robert Kazinsky), shapeshifter Quasi (Sam Richardson), buttoned-down officer Rachel Garrett (Kacey Rohl), no-nonsense leader Alok (Omari Hardwick), and a tiny lifeform called Fuzz (Sven Ruygrok) who controls a robotic Vulcan body.
It’s all very Mission: Impossible-meets-Guardians Of The Galaxy, and is burdened with more than a few tropes of both. But it’s also got a healthily arch spirit to it, and the concept of Fuzz is one that is clever and well-used (even if Ruygrok for some reason is using a dreadful Irish accent).
Yeoh is naturally great, and while it does leave the door open for more, that seems unlikely at this point. Still, as TV movies go, this should at least tide fans over until the studio can figure out a new big screen offering.
Star Trek: Section 31 is on Paramount+ now.