'Mufasa' Tops $600M as 'Mickey 17' Pushes A Good Time and Paramount Slots 'Scary Movie 6' For Summer 2026

Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp's 'Presence' is a haunted house melodrama unlike any you've seen, so endlessly compelling that you won't care that it's not scary.

In today’s newsletter of… uh… news!

• Presence review - Soderbergh and Koepp came to play. (free)

• Mufasa: The Lion King passes $600 million worldwide

• Mickey 17 trailer sells big-scale sci-fi that’s… fun!

• Scary Movie 6 gets slotted for June 2026

Presence review - So good it’s scary!

I walked into NEON’s Presence without much knowledge beyond the fact that it was Steven Soderbergh making a haunted house film and that Lucy Liu was the top-billed star. Consequently, I almost instantly broke into a silly grin as the first scene established its core gimmick. I’m not sure this qualifies as a spoiler, but just in case… spoiler warning… the opening moments reveal that Presence is a “family gets haunted by spooky stuff in their new home” movie told entirely from the perspective of the ghost. Is it scary? Honestly, no, but it’s endlessly engaging to watch an American master bring something genuinely new and cinematically thrilling to one of the medium’s oldest sub-genres. Working from a David Koepp screenplay, Soderbergh’s genre experiment isn’t just a technical exercise; it also serves as a character study, and… no spoilers, but it really sticks the landing.

The core nuclear family (Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Lang, and Eddie Maday) has just moved into a new home following the unexpected death of young Chloe’s best friend. Pushover Pa understands that Workaholic Ma favors Tyler because of his presumed potential, so he overcompensates to ensure that Chloe doesn’t feel unloved. He is also aware that his wife has been doing something illegal related to her job and is struggling with how to protect himself without breaking up the family, making the apparent “poltergeist” that starts targeting the kids feel like an insult to injury. Of course, in many great ghost stories, the family is already facing difficulties before the hauntings or possessions begin. Consider the underrated The Haunting in Connecticut, focused on the family’s teen son dying of cancer. However, I appreciated how A Quiet Place portrayed a family that would be fine if not for the world-ending noise monsters.

I won’t see Mel Gibson’s Flight Risk until Sunday, as my wife is interested. Assuming it’s not a train wreck, there’s probably something to write about (see also - One of Them Days and Companion), a quasi-return of the “maximum steak, minimum sizzle” 90-minute movie as a studio staple. Presence gets in and out in just over 80 minutes (plus credits). Since there aren’t many protracted set pieces, there’s plenty of time for a fleshed-out narrative with compelling character arcs that work on their own. Sure, some initial subplots don’t pay off comparatively, and the relationships don’t reinvent the wheel. Still, the matter-of-fact presentation and almost offhanded way our human protagonists engage with the hauntings make the formula and even some cliches feel brand new. Bemusingly, the core relationships and conflicts feel akin to Wolf Man sans the yellow-highlighter monologues and the “message > medium” human behavior.

There are slight similarities to Koepp’s 1999 adaptation of Stir of Echoes, while the structure feels like a micro-budget, arthouse riff on “Wait a minute… we’re the ghosts?” films like Beetlejuice and (no spoilers for very old but exceptionally good spooky movies). This is as much an adventure in filmmaking, where the main character is essentially Soderbergh himself as the man with the camera, as it is a conventional fright flick. But Presence is captivating in how it tells an old story in a new way, even as the technical choices allow the picture’s emotional elements to hide in the shadows until it’s time for them to kick you right in the gut. I’m not enough of a Soderbergh expert to pontificate on where this fits into his filmography, but (pending how Black Bag turns out) we could see the kind of near-concurrent double-whammy that I usually associate with the other “S.S.” director.