Steven Soderbergh Double-bill

Notes on two recent Steven Soderbergh films:

Presence (2024)

Black Bag (2025)

Very few directors can boast the career arc of Steven Soderbergh. His feature debut film is the stuff of Cinematic dreams. Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, won the audience award and then went on to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Winning the Palme d’Or at the first time of asking and at the age of 26 is an incredible feat, especially for an independent film. Soderbergh then made the jump to commercial cinema yet still finding a way to incorporate artistic indie film elements. Films such as Out of Sight (1998), Ocean’s Eleven, (2001) have a cool seductive feel and it is safe to say that in the hands of another director would have turned into mindless action films. Soderbergh directed many notable films such as Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000), Che (2008), Contagion (2011). That is why his 2011 announcement that he would retire from filmmaking was a shock. Later on, as more details emerged, he expressed his reasons related for that retirement and his return to filmmaking with a new distribution model. He has certainly re-emerged with a new prolific creativity that has filtered into both films and TV series. Case in point, his recent double: Presence (2024) and Black Bag (2025).

Both Presence and Black Bag refine genre (horror and spy thriller respectively) through an independent film’s sensibilities such as singular location and limited cast. The end result are highly creative engaging films.

The idea behind Presence is electric: a horror film where the entire perspective is seen via the eyes of the spirit with the camera doubling as the spirit’s eyes. The hovering camera is a technical joy to behold and also lends a levity to the film as the camera floats from room to room. There are no conventional jump scares in the film but still some hair-raising moments. Due to the spirit’s POV, the entire film is confined to the house the spirit occupies. The confined house location along with a very tight script and running time of just 84 minutes ensures the film is engaging from start to finish.

Black Bag is equally efficient with his running time of 93 minutes and film is bookended with scenes in a house’s dining room. These dining room scenes feature smart probing dialogues laced with alcohol or drugs (at film’s start) which ensure brutal honest jabs. The camera does leave the house and follows the characters to their place of work and outdoor locations to show agents at work in the field or making deals/exchanging information. A spy thriller wouldn’t be complete without blood, explosions and backstabbing, all three of which are present in the film but in unconventional forms. The film’s lighting and cinematography is more akin to a small indie film and add to the film’s atmosphere. Black Bag looks and feels like an indie spy thriller but one that features Hollywood recognizable stars.

It is safe to say that Soderbergh wouldn’t have been able to make films such as Presence and Black Bag prior to his retirement. However, since Logan Lucky (2017), Soderbergh has been releasing such creative films. Presence and Black Bag form a nice trilogy along with 2022’s Kimi as Soderberg worked with writer David Koepp on all 3. Soderberg and Koepp have certainly formed a nice combination and it will be interesting to see if the two combine for more films.

Contagion

End of the World with a cough and a handshake

Contagion (2011, USA/UAE, Steven Soderbergh)

Day 2: A woman coughs on one side of the world and the planet starts moving towards a quick end.

In reality, the end of the world started on the night of Day 1 after the woman passed on her contracted virus to others in an invisible indirect manner when others touched any objects the woman held in her hands. Her cough on Day 2 is the first visible sign that something is wrong. However, there is not much time for anyone to be saved once they get the disease because the virus moves rapidly through the body causing instant death. Naturally, global panic results as more people start dying around the world.

As with most mass epidemic diseases, a few work hard to find a cure, some try to help as many people as possible, others spend their time spinning conspiracy theories or causing more panic while a few look to make money for themselves. In this regard, the movie gives an adequate time slice to an entire array of characters so as to paint a complete picture of what unfolds when a mass epidemic results. So there are characters who are shown to collect samples and analyze the virus, others try to grow the virus so a cure/anti-body can be found, government/health officials debate how to handle public safety, pharmaceutical companies try to sell vaccines, journalists cover the story while common folk are concerned for their loved ones and do whatever they can to save their families/friends.

Contagion shows that most humans are driven by fear or greed, regardless of their job title, so in a sense the film is short on selfless heroes. A single rebel doctor who grows the virus is probably the only hero in the film but the planet could have been truly saved if every human citizen had a hand sanitizer. Of course, if a hand sanitizer was readily available, then there would have been no spread of the virus on Day 1. The absence of a hand sanitizer to save the day means door knobs and hand railings in Contagion are made to look as dangerous as dark hallways do in horror/slasher films.

The film moves at a healthy pace, crisscrossing across various international cities, and keeps the viewer engaged by following a different character in each segment. Contagion shows that a good film can still be made within a predictable template that depicts expected behavior from most characters. However, the true power of Contagion is reserved for the film’s final segment which depicts how the disease came to be spread on Day 1. There are some clues given for the disease’s origin before the final segment that would allow people to piece things together. Still, the final segment is chillingly effective and manages to tie the whole film together nicely.