Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh on his new film Presence, starring Lucy Liu

Director Steven Soderbergh doesn't consider himself a believer in the supernatural, but he's more receptive to the possibility of things existing in the shadows than most.

Soderbergh, during an interview in London, mentioned that his mother, Mary Ann, was a parapsychologist. He was in London at the time filming "Black Bag," a spy thriller starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. Growing up in Charlottesville, Virginia, he was accustomed to strangers constantly visiting to discuss various paranormal phenomena.

"When you're young and one of your parents is involved in some kind of fringe profession, you know, I wasn't bragging about it at school," the director of "Ocean's Eleven," "Magic Mike," and "Behind the Candelabra" said with a laugh. "I was neutral about it. I didn't think it was absurd, but it didn't draw me in." Nevertheless, he could sense the intense emotions the visitors felt when describing these experiences. "You could tell from their physical state that they were still deeply affected when they described these things."

"Presence," penned by "Jurassic Park" screenwriter David Koepp, is the Oscar-winning director's latest work, drawing from the mysterious atmosphere of his mother's world. It unveils the veil between worlds, offering a captivating take on the haunted house genre that subverts expectations. Lucy Liu plays Rebecca, a pragmatic businesswoman who buys a suburban mansion at a bargain price, and the entire film's story unfolds within this house.

Everything seems ideal when Rebecca moves into the new home with her husband, Chris, her beloved teenage son, Tyler, and her more estranged daughter, Chloe. However, before we even meet the family, we witness an unusual phenomenon, perceiving the house's dark corners and crevices from a sweeping, lens-based perspective, as if we are an unseen presence lurking within. Is it benevolent or malevolent? Soderbergh had always hoped to work with Liu. When he gave the script for "Presence" to casting director Carmen Cuba, she knew the time had come. "She said, 'Oh, is this for Lucy?' I said, 'Yeah, I think so.'"

Soderbergh's teenage bedroom was "a total movie-boy cave," influenced by his father, Peter, a film-buff and scholar. "Until the summer of 1975, when I was 12 and I saw 'Jaws,' it was just part of my life. I wanted to know what 'directed by' meant, and who Steven Spielberg was." His obsession with baseball vanished, and he began focusing on filmmaking. Soderbergh's first film—the controversially titled "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," starring Andie MacDowell and James Spader—premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1989.

"I often think about titles because they determine whether they spark people's interest or generate a completely neutral, or even, in some cases, negative reaction," Soderbergh said. "My first film went through a real title debate, and I ended up describing the movie in a last-ditch effort, in stark, almost flippant terms." "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and Soderbergh received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Naming was also important for "Presence." "It seemed like, again, the simplest way to describe it without giving anything away, which was crucial in this case."

In "Presence," Chloe's bedroom is decorated with teenage passions, much like Soderbergh's own bedroom once was. "Production designer April Lasky and I talked a lot about the rooms," Soderbergh said. "The aesthetic of a teenage bedroom evolves organically but not always linearly. Kids go through phases of being obsessed with certain things, and then they tear that stuff down. Your allegiances are constantly shifting." Sometimes, those posters—or closet shelves—fall down unexpectedly, sending chills down your spine. "That happened the other night, in the middle of the night," Soderbergh said. "There was a noise that woke my wife and me up, and you immediately revert to a primal state, trying to figure out what happened because your amygdala is flashing."

Soderbergh said the concept behind "Presence" was "probably the simplest idea I've ever had." "But simple ideas can have real power. They're primal." Zach Ryan's score helps to create the atmosphere. "Pretty quickly, you realize two things: that this 'it' used to be a person, and that it has some sadness," Soderbergh said. "It's searching the house, trying to find someone or something. Because obviously, the big question that's on the table but isn't answered until the last shot is, 'Who is this?'"

Chris enlists a reluctant, second-sighted woman in the hopes that she can answer the question, much to Rebecca's annoyance. "That's the only scene I asked David to go back and adjust," Soderbergh revealed. "In the first draft, she felt more like the parapsychologist, Dr. Martha Lesh (Beatrice Straight), from 'Poltergeist,' but I wanted her to be more grounded because I grew up with my mother. There's nothing weird about it. It's shockingly mundane."

The film was shot by the nimble Soderbergh himself using a small handheld camera. "I'm really in the scene with the actors," Soderbergh said. "If a shot in this movie is ruined, it's because I made a mistake, so there's an added performance anxiety. And fear of falling down the stairs." It was a very real risk. "I was wearing these little slippers with rubber grips on the bottom, and I had to look at my feet, so I was aiming based on rehearsal and muscle memory at where I thought the camera was, but sometimes I would cut someone's head off."

That statement immediately brought to mind the shocking scene near the beginning of Soderbergh's film "Contagion," where Gwyneth Paltrow's skull is dissected. The film experienced an unsettling resurgence during the lockdown, and audiences have recently rediscovered it. "It's nice when people watch work," Soderbergh admitted, "but it's not an optimal state of affairs, because the only circumstance in which 'Contagion' becomes the number one movie again is if a real pandemic is happening."

"Presence" was released in theaters on February 6.