Steven Soderbergh often applies his brainy, process-based approach to new genres; with Presence, he tries his hand at ghost-story horror.

Doing his own camerawork, the director gleefully enriches the haunted-house genre with a simple but ingenious device.

They’re selling “Presence” as a horror movie when it’s something else entirely: a ghost story as told from the point of view of the ghost. As such, it’s more unsettling than scary, more dramatically gripping than nerve-shredding. And it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh, so you know it has to be smart.