The filmmaker turns a supernatural thriller into a first-person storytelling experiment and a family drama that'd make Eugene O'Neill cringe.

The camera is the ghost in Steven Soderbergh's chillingly effective, experiential haunted house drama “Presence.”

The tingly thriller “Presence” starts with a knockout premise: What if you told a ghost story from the perspective of the ghost? Each scene in Steven Soderbergh’s impeccably crafted film is a single take that glides silently from room to room observing what happens in an ordinary suburban house.

In his nomadic career, Soderbergh has been a big-screen name happy to work for Netflix and HBO. Presence, though, is clearly made to be watched in the cinema, with a crowd, preferably while being under 19.

"I always operate the camera, but this was next level," the director says. "I’m really in there with the actors."

What makes “Presence” interesting is its point-of-view “gimmick.” It’s just the story that’s being told that’s somewhat hacky.