Coherence (2013)
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Coherence Movie Review
Coherence is a 2013 indie science fiction thriller film directed by James Ward Byrkit. It’s an admirable, but flawed indie effort that still manages to impress.
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“No, we’re not splitting up.
We’re just gonna go in two different groups“
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The film follows a group of friends and couples who are on a dinner party together. When the comet passes, suddenly the group realizes that the house next door contains their doppelgangers. Then everything turns into chaos as the multiple realities change and mix together. Coherence is thus more incoherent than coherent, but still it’s a brave and actually more scientific take on multiple realities and parallel universes.
First and foremost, as a hard science fiction film, this indie definitely succeeds very much. It includes the well explored concept of Schrodinger’s cat while constantly keeping the story intriguing, twisty and sophisticated. These people are obviously somewhat or quite smart and listening to their conversations was thus very interesting.
It’s a dialogue-heavy feature which really works as the dialogue is terrific and thought-provoking. I also appreciated the many twists here and the finale is very spooky and instantly unforgettable that it lingered in my mind long afterwards. A really well done conclusion for sure.
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Where the film doesn’t quite work is in the thriller department. Yes, some of the third act is effective, but most of it isn’t really because the film’s ridiculously small budget prevented the filmmakers from going all in with the doppelgangers and thus we do not ever get the two groups facing each other together in a shot. That led to the thriller elements feeling manipulatively contrived, though sometimes working, but mostly not as much as the director obviously intended them to.
The same goes for the SF elements overall. The movie felt overly convenient in some plot points, especially the two groups never meeting, because they did not have the budget to do so. But thankfully for the most part the film relied on its intelligence to carry it through successfully to the finish line.
James Ward Byrkit directed the hell out of this film and in particular what he did with the actors needs to be praised constantly. He basically gave them a couple of lines of dialogue and not the whole script so they did not know what the other actors’ are going to say and they were constantly not in the know with the plot points and thus some of their reactions and conversations are quite genuine. By relying so heavily on improvisation not only did he evade the weak acting caliber being showcased more, but he also genuinely made this group of people feel real and if they really are lifelong friends. That was amazing and it gave a lot of true authenticity to this picture.
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Coherence is basically a smaller-scale, indie version of ‘Us’ from Jordan Peele, but this one relies more on actual science instead of social commentary and I really dug that. I loved those couple of comet sequences as they were almost mythical in quality and signifying something ominous to happen. The movie uses quick cuts and shaky cam tactics way too much for my personal liking, but for the most part it’s well shot and very well scored. In the end, I honestly expected a bit more, but the end product is still impressive for such a small budget.
Coherence often is overly convenient due to its ridiculously small budget and thus the thriller elements weren’t as effective, but it wildly succeeds as a hard science fiction film thanks to a great premise very well explored with a strong scientific take on it. The direction is excellent and in particular the improvisational nature of the dialogue and the acting gave the film a lot of true authenticity.
