Presence, starring Lucy Liu, flips horror on its head to tell the story from a ghost's perspective

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Horror's always been one of the most expressive genres in film, a creative playground for directors to experiment with innovative techniques like eerie first-person point-of-view shots, unconventional storytelling through found footage, and suspenseful, close-quarters thrill rides.

Even when compared to that legendary history, Steven Soderbergh's Presence might be the first horror movie – at least in a major release – that's convincingly told from the perspective of a spirit.

Fair dinkum, there've been some attempts to give the supernatural a fair go – think 2017's A Ghost Story, with Casey Affleck wrapped up in a sheet, or any number of flicks that turn out to be just a character's daydream, who's been six feet under the whole time. (No names, mate, for spoiler reasons.)

But Soderbergh's new film is different in how it shows that perspective, calling up a feeling that's genuinely not human, a ghostly vision that could possibly be a message from another dimension.

Using a Sony DSLR still camera switched to video mode, Soderbergh creates the illusion of a spirit floating between levels. The camera moves in long takes with a strange staccato beat, as if some seconds are missing, making the actors' lines sound a bit off-beat as a result. It's a disorienting and thrilling effect, like watching CCTV footage from another world.

The story starts with the entity already on the scene, situated within the empty, 100-year-old property where the events take place. The entity watches as a real estate agent, Julia Fox, arrives to prepare the house for an inspection. (If you've ever scrolled through a 360-degree view of a property on the internet, the scene is eerily familiar.)

Not long after, a middle-aged couple, Rebekah and Chris, pull up in their car with their teenagers, Tyler and Chloe. The mum, who's very much in control of the family, is keen to buy the house and move in immediately; there's a hint that she might be mixed up in something a bit dodgy, which is causing some stress in the relationship.

More concerning is the gloomy, anxious Chloe, who's become withdrawn after her best friend, Nadia, recently died from a drug overdose. She's on edge and moody, which is the opposite of her brother, who's a cheeky, sporty type and just wants her to snap out of it so she doesn't make a spectacle of herself in front of his new mate, Ryan (West Mulholland).

When objects start to move around the house on their own, it's Chloe, the sensitive one, who notices they're there. School books float across the room and tidy themselves up. Light bulbs flicker and blow. She's convinced it's Nadia, still hanging around after she's gone. But could it be something more dodgy, an old ghost that's been hanging around the place for years?

Having the whole thing play out through the ghost's eyes gives the flick a steady, unnerving vibe, which is more about being on edge than outright frightened – you're never quite sure what's going on, because the perspective is so out of sync with what we usually think of as reality.

At times it feels like it's building up to be one of those old YouTube vids where you're waiting for the jump scare that never comes, but instead the tension just keeps building and getting more uncomfortable.

"It's suffering," a visiting psychic (Natalie Woolams-Torres) says to the family about their eerie housemate. Whatever it is, it's not operating on human hours.

If Presence seems like unusual territory for Soderbergh, an indie whiz who went on to remake American studio movies with Erin Brockovich, Magic Mike and the Ocean's Eleven series, the movie is more personal than you might think. Soderbergh's mum was a parapsychologist, and he's said that Presence was inspired by the fact that his own home is rumoured to be haunted.

It's a bold move from a director who's often experimenting with new forms, and he's done this by playing around with technology – just look at his digital experiments like Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience, or the psychological thriller Unsane, which he shot on an iPhone.

Even at a lengthy 84 minutes, the movie struggles to maintain its supernatural swagger, and elements of a more traditional plot – the work of experienced screenwriter David Koepp, whose credits include Jurassic Park and Soderbergh's Kimi – start to take over.

Fair dinkum, the movie's not diminished by its straightforward storyline. Soderbergh and Koepp keep the movie on the edge of your seat and twisty right through to its bloody unsettling final image, landing an ending as spine-tingling as it is emotional. You might even leave the cinema feeling a bit spooked yourself.