Coherence, a 2013 film that is the quintessence of mindfuckery, is very hard to review without giving away the plot. So I'll give a brief review followed by a spoiler alert and a more in-depth review below that.
Coherence is the first feature-length film by director James Ward Byrkit, and it is a doozy of a first movie. Starring a cast of mostly unknowns, save Nicholas Brendon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and shot with a handheld camera, Coherence feels both intimate and unnerving.
Eight friends gather for a dinner party on the same night that a comet is passing by overhead. The first hint that something is amiss is when Em's (Emily Baldoni) phone cracks as she's holding it and in the middle of a conversation with her boyfriend, Kevin (Maury Sterling). As the rest of the gang gathers at hosts Lee (Lorene Scafaria) and Mike's (Nicholas Brendan) house, they notice that their phones also have no service. A few people mention that the comet can supposedly interfere with cell service, but no one seems overly alarmed.
Instead, the dinner party is tense enough with sensitive group dynamics at play. Kevin's ex-girlfriend, the sultry Laurie (Lauren Maher), is in attendance, which pisses off Em and her woo-woo spiritualist friend Beth (Elizabeth Gracen). Beth also annoys the hosts by bringing a homemade party drug to the event and then criticizing Lee and Mike's home feng shui.
So imagine, if you will, a slightly tense dinner party among old friends that gets interrupted by a neighborhood blackout (after phone and Internet service go down). Some of the friends are understandably freaked out, while others are enjoying the unusual turn of events. When all the lights in the house go out, the gang ventures outside and realizes that one single house in the distance is fully lit up, as if the owners have access to a generator. A couple of the men in the group decide to head over there to see what's up and ask to use their landline. And that's where shit gets craaaaazzzzzyyyy.
I'll stop here before moving on to the spoiler-y part of the review and say that 1) Coherence creeped me out in the most fun, enjoyable way possible and 2) it's a really good, creative film. It's on Amazon Prime and I highly recommend it. Grade: A-
Now, onto the SPOILERS!
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Hugh (Hugo Armstrong) and Amir (Manugian) decide to head over to the lit up house and see what's up. When they come back, Hugo has a head wound and seems thoroughly freaked out. He also has a locked box with him. They open the box to find pictures of each of the themselves with a number written on the back...and a ping pong paddle. What? Hugh also says he "saw something". When they finally convince him to tell them what he saw, he reveals that when he peaked in the window of the lit up house, he saw a table, just like the one they're sitting at, set for eight...and he also saw some of them at that table...in that other house...
Meanwhile, Mike and Lee get their generator up and running so that they, too, have a fully lit house. The gang is skeptical of Hugh and Amir's little adventure. Hugh decides to write a note and go back to the other house and post it on their door. As he's writing it, there is a sound at the door...sure enough, a note saying the exact same thing in Hugh's handwriting is taped to their door...
At this point, the group realizes something insanely fucked is going on. Have they entered a wormhole? Does the comet have anything (or everything?) to do with it? Did Beth slip some of that woo-woo homemade drug into their food causing a mass hallucination?
What I loved about Coherence was that is was not a tease. It examines and explores the implications of what turns out to be a Sliding Doors situation (the film Sliding Doors is actually discussed in the film): somehow this comet has created a universe in which there are an infinite number of houses with an infinite number of Ems, Kevins, Lauries, Lees, Mikes, Beths, Hughs, and Amirs. And all of these groups are simultaneously freaking out...sneaking around and looking into each others' houses...and trying to make sense of it all.
The locked box with the pictures and ping pong paddle are explained--they're a marker for the house so that when people leave the house to explore the neighborhood, they'll know which house is the original one they're from. The numbers were chosen by the roll of a die and the ping pong paddle is an object chosen at random to doubly-identify the house--much like a two-step identification to get access to your email or bank account.
What was perhaps most interesting about Coherence is the divide between the members of the group who see the other versions of themselves out there in the neighborhood as enemies or "others", and the people who see the other versions as identical to themselves and not a threat. Mike, for example, is terrified that another Mike might get drunk and try to come to their house and kill everyone...so his plan is to drink and then go try to kill the people in the other house...genius, right? Similarly, Em, who is experiencing jealousy by seeing her boyfriend Kevin interact with his ex, Laurie, starts poking into windows to see which version of herself and Kevin seem the most genuinely committed and in love.
Instead of shrouding the plot in mystery, Byrkit takes his time in exploring the implications of such an improbable situation...and leads to an interesting payoff.
With naturalistic acting and camerawork, the audience feels like a fly on the wall to the most fucked up, fascinating dinner party in history. We all love to watch bitchy friend drama unfold--but with the added element of theoretical physics thrown in, it's all the better.
Grade: A-
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