The Presence is yet another demonstration of just how much the Blair Witch Project (1999) has to answer for. Every filmmaker with minimal funds seems to be choosing this cheap and nasty sub-genre and making a carbon copy of a thousand movies that came before it.
German made it tells the "Highly original" tale of 3 friends who perform a supernatural investigation in a castle. So cue the night vision, randomly moving objects, static, and lot's and lot's of screaming.
I have nothing against found footage per say, I'm just tired of each movie being the same as the last. When it comes to the sub genre I'd say there is a neat little scale, at the top you'd have Rec (2007) and Grave Encounters (2011) and it goes all the way down to Fear Footage (2018) and Paranormal Entity (2009).
At no point does it feel like this is being filmed inside a castle, it's limited to a couple of rooms and quite frankly they look like a combination of a persons house and a barn. I would have liked to see a castle setting, would have made a fresh change from asylums and haunted mansions.
Alike most other movies in this sub-genre very little happens, it suffers with all the usual tropes and cliches and ultimately is boring, lifeless and more evidence that found footage needs putting on the shelf for a while.
The Good:
Nope
The Bad:
Music/sound effects have no place in found footage
Very badly structured
Wasted setting