Presence ending explained: Who was the ghost all along?

Although the ghost's interventions are more or less kept to a minimum for most of the runtime, teenaged daughter Chloe (Liang) is able to sense its presence, and thinks it might be the spirit of her close friend Nadia, whose tragic death has understandably been bringing her much grief.

However, as the narrative continues, there are some fascinating clues as to the mystery of the ghost's true identity – leading up to a corker of a final reveal when it makes its purpose clear.

Seen the film and need anything cleared up? Read on to have the Presence ending explained - and beware spoilers.

Presence ending explained: Who was the ghost all along?

During the film, we see Chloe becoming close with a friend of her brother's named Ryan (West Mulholland) – with the pair striking up a romantic relationship.

However, it quickly becomes clear that Ryan is a far cry from the upstanding gentleman he presents himself as, and in one scene he attempts to spike Chloe's orange juice, only for the seemingly benevolent ghost to come to the rescue by knocking the glass over before she can drink from it.

Still unaware of Ryan's evil intentions, Chloe takes his word at face value when he says he wants to see her for a longer period of time, and she invites him to stay the night while her parents are away at a conference.

She's slightly concerned about how they'll get her brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) out of the way, but Ryan assures her that he's got that sorted.

And so, when the time comes, Ryan shows up at the door, pretending that he's just visiting his pal Tyler. The two listen to some music and have a few drinks, but Ryan slips a substance into Tyler's drink and ensures he loses consciousness before heading up to Chloe's room.

It doesn't take long for him to enact out his plan, and this time he's successful in spiking Chloe's drink again, before revealing that it was him who had killed her friend Nadia – and another girl from their neighbourhood – and that Chloe is his next victim.

A deeply uncomfortable scene follows with the ghost watching on, before the spirit quickly heads downstairs and desperately shakes Tyler awake.

Tyler seems to realise straight away that something terrible is happening and that he must intervene, and he rushes upstairs to find Tyler standing over his sister's unconscious body.

Taking matters into his own hands, he grabs Ryan and throws them both out the nearby window – falling to their deaths but saving Chloe.

We then flash forward to some time in the near future, with Chloe and her parents now looking to move out of the house. But before they leave, Rebecca (Lucy Liu) looks into the mirror and lets out a blood-curdling scream – the reason being that she has seen her son Tyler's reflection in the mirror.

At this point, it becomes apparent that he had been the ghost all along. When the family had previously sought out the help of a psychic medium, she had told them that time works differently for spirits, and so it seems that ghost Tyler has essentially gone back in time to prevent his sister from being abused and murdered by Ryan.

Given he had been shown as a pretty nasty character – especially towards Chloe – throughout much of the film, this also serves as a redemption arc of sorts for Tyler, sacrificing himself to save his sister.

It's worth noting that thinking too hard about the logic of the reveal, and exactly how the ghostly timeline works, poses all sorts of questions, so it's perhaps best not to study it in too much detail.

But it's clear that Tyler had been the ghost for the whole time and simply had to work out his duty to rescue Chloe.

Meanwhile, the reason Rebecca can now see the ghost links back to what had earlier been explained by the medium – that spirits are more visible to those that have experienced trauma.

Losing her son is, of course, a hugely traumatic event, and so this explains why she can now see his spirit.

Presence is now showing in UK cinemas.

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