Coherence (film)

Coherence

Theatrical release poster
Directed by James Ward Byrkit
Written by James Ward Byrkit
Story by
  • James Ward Byrkit
  • Alex Manugian
Starring
Music by Kristin Øhrn Dyrud
Cinematography Nic Sadler
Edited by Lance Pereira
Production
company
  • Bellanova Films
  • Ugly Duckling Films
Distributed by
Release dates
  • September 19, 2013 (2013-09-19) (Austin Fantastic Fest)
Running time
 88 minutes[1]
Country
  • United States
Language English
Budget $50,000
Box office $102,617[2]

Coherence is an American science fiction film directed by James Ward Byrkit in his directorial debut.[3] The film had its world debut on September 19, 2013 at the Austin Fantastic Fest and stars Emily Baldoni as a woman who must deal with strange occurrences following a comet sighting.[4]

Plot

While driving to a dinner party at the home of married couple Mike and Lee, Em speaks to her boyfriend Kevin on her mobile phone. During the conversation, her phone stops working and the screen cracks. She arrives at the house and meets Mike, Lee and another friend, Beth, and shows them her cracked phone, mentioning that she had heard that this could happen as a side effect of a comet passing close by the Earth that evening, as reported in the news. The rest of the guests arrive: Kevin, Hugh (Beth's husband), and newly together couple Amir and Laurie (an ex of Kevin's). Seated at the dinner table they discuss the comet and its supposed effects. Hugh's phone has also cracked and he shows this to the others. He mentions that his brother, who has a keen interest in quantum physics, has told him that the comet could have some strange effects on the planet as it passes. Em tells two stories about strange phenomena recorded after astral bodies came in close proximity to the Earth - one in Finland in 1923 when another comet passed, and an earlier meteor explosion over Russia in 1908. The conversation moves on, and Em says she should be a successful, famous dancer but for one indecisive moment in her life which resulted in another dancer "living her life".

During dinner a blackout occurs. They light candles and Mike provides blue glow sticks as a light source. The group take a look outside to see if other houses were affected by the power outage and see one house that has lights on, presumably powered by a generator. Hugh and Amir decide to go to the house to ask if they have a telephone so that Hugh can contact his brother. While they are gone, Mike gets their own home's generator working and power is restored. Hugh and Amir return in some level of distress and confusion. Hugh has an injury to his face and Amir has brought back a lock box that he found outside the other house because he thought that he saw Hugh drop it - but Hugh protests that he didn't. When the others demand an explanation from Hugh as to what happened, he tells them that when he looked in the window of the other house, he saw it was set up for dinner exactly like theirs. The others react with scorn and disbelief. Curious, they open the box and find a ping pong paddle and a photo of each of them with a number written on the back. Em tells Kevin that she recognises the handwriting on the pictures as hers, and Amir tells the group that the photo must have been taken of him that evening as in it he is wearing a sweater that he bought that day.

After much discussion about what to do, Mike, Laurie, Em and Kevin decide to go to the other house. When Mike sees the house, he realizes that it looks exactly like his house and he looks through the window. When they hear someone coming they head back to their house. In the street they encounter a group of people who look exactly like them, except they are holding red glowsticks as opposed to blue. After a few seconds both groups panic and bolt back to their respective houses.

Back inside, the group frantically tries to figure out what is happening and Beth remembers that there is a quantum physics book in Hugh's car that his brother lent to him. Hugh retrieves the book and reads to the others the coherence theory of quantum physics. The group decides from this information that the comet has opened up a door to a parallel reality, and that this de-coherence of reality will collapse back to one single reality after the comet has passed.

After further discussion they realize that due to variances between the houses, it is possible the other versions of them haven't remembered the book and they should steal it in order to prevent their other selves from discovering the de-coherence in reality. Meanwhile, Mike, an alcoholic, who has started drinking to help him cope with the "collapse" of his reality, decides his best course of action is to blackmail his other self into keeping the other group from reading the book. He says so to Kevin, who advises him not to, but he writes himself a threatening note anyway and he leaves the house while his friends are occupied.

While he is gone, the conversation continues; discrepancies in details of things that happened during the evening are highlighted. Covertly moving out of sight from the other group members, Amir and Hugh- who are seen to have red glow sticks- leave the house again with the lock box and the book. Kevin and Laurie kiss.

A noise is heard outside so the group investigates, and they find a car window has been smashed. Em retrieves a carnival ring she got from Kevin, and the pair reminisce; but while talking, they realize they are from opposite groups and retreat from each other in fear. Em returns to the house and shows Kevin the ring; he shows no sign of acknowledging that they had just spoken about it outside, proving to Em that this is not the same Kevin whom she just encountered at the car.

The original Amir and Hugh return with red and blue glowsticks, saying they got the red ones from the other house. The group decides to create a means to identify themselves and the house they are in as belonging to them and their own reality. They decide to find a box and put into it a photo of each of them with a randomly generated die number on the back together with a key object. Em collates the photos and writes the assigned random numbers on each one and in a list on a note pad. The objects are then put into the box with an object. It is closed and left outside the house for them to use as their marker.

Em compares the numbers she remembers from the original stolen box with the numbers the group has just rolled for their own box, and while she is doing this, she notices that Hugh is calculating the probability of both houses rolling the same numbers on his mobile phone; however, earlier in the evening Hugh's phone had been shown to be broken in the same manner as Em's, leading Em to realize that this is not the original Hugh. She casually asks the group members what numbers they had on their photos earlier. As a result of their answers she realizes that several of the group members are not in their original house, including herself.

Em realizes that only those who never left the house are the original group members belonging to that reality, and that nobody who left had returned to their original house as they supposed they had. She theorises that the "dark zone" (what the group remarks on as being an exceptionally dark stretch of the street outside) must act as some kind of multiple access point to many alternate realities and that anyone who passes through it exits into one of these realities at random. This means that anyone who has crossed through the dark zone might not be able to return to the same reality that they just left. This theory is seemingly backed up by the groups' apparent amnesia about events or actions they have decided to take or that have already happened during the evening. The group also realises that the marker items that were in their house's boxes are different: rather than just the ping pong paddle of the red glow stick house and the coaster of the blue glow stick house, some members say their marker item was a stapler or an oven mitt.

The group is then disturbed by the arrival of Mike's note to himself. Hugh reads it and discovers that it refers to an infidelity between his wife Beth and Mike. He attacks Mike and they realize this Hugh isn't theirs. A Mike runs in the house and beats their Mike badly and runs away. In the commotion that ensues, Em, not wanting to be stuck in this reality, covertly leaves the house and crosses through the dark zone to visits multiple homes where she observes how their other selves are coping in this situation. They are often chaotic and confrontational.

In a reality where the group is sitting and chatting together happily with no idea of the situation she decides to take action. She lures her other self outside by smashing Hugh's car's windscreen, causing the group to leave the house to investigate the noise and subsequently check their own cars. While this reality's Em is checking her car (and also retrieving the carnival ring from the car's glove compartment) the original Em attacks, drugging her and hiding her body in the trunk of her car. She then returns to the house to take the other Em's place. With this group she goes outside to watch the comet and it breaks up as it passes Earth.

Returning to the house, Em sees that either the drugged Em has escaped from the trunk of the car or possibly a third Em from another reality has entered and is crawling to the bathroom, vulnerable and in distress. Panicked that the others will see both of them, she knocks this other Em unconscious and hides her in the bathtub. As she calms down and composes herself before leaving the bathroom, she notices she has lost the carnival ring; she steals the ring that the unconscious Em is wearing to replace it. However, her own ring is on the bathroom floor. She then returns to the others in the living room but, perhaps overcome by panic, she faints.

Em awakes the next morning to find herself on the couch in the living room. She gets up and wanders through the house and finds everything in order; she encounters Lee and Beth, and both are in good spirits. She goes outside and sees Hugh's smashed windscreen, confirming that she woke up in the same reality and that it wasn't all just a dream. Kevin approaches her, expressing concern about her because of her collapse last night. As they are talking, his phone rings. He notices that, oddly enough, the caller ID shows that the call is coming from Em's own phone. He answers the call, and the film ends with Kevin and Em looking suspiciously at each other.

Cast

Production

Development

Byrkit came up with the idea for Coherence after deciding that he wanted to test the idea of shooting a film "without a crew and without a script".[5] He chose to shoot in his own home and developed the film's science fiction aspect out of necessity, as he wanted to "make a living room feel bigger than just a living room".[5] While Byrkit did have a specific idea for how the film would unfold, he selected improvisational actors and gave them the basic outline of their characters, motivations, and major plot points.[6]

Byrkit told an interviewer, "For about a year, all I did was make charts and maps and drew diagrams of houses, arrows pointing where everyone was going, trying to keep track of different iterations. Months and months of tracking fractured realities, looking up what actual scientists believe about the nature of reality — Schrödinger's cat and all that. It was research, but despite all the graphs and charts, I think our whole idea was that it has to be character-based. We want the logic of our internal rules to be sound, and we wanted it to be something people could watch 12 times and still discover a new layer."[7]

Casting

Byrkit intentionally chose actors who did not know each other. He told an interviewer that, after working on blockbuster films (such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl), "I come from theater where I was trained to really just concentrate on story and character on a stage with actors and so I was craving getting rid of everything, getting rid of the crew; getting rid of script, no special effects, no support, no money, no nothing, and just getting back to the purity of that, of a camera in your hand and some actress (actors?) that you trust and an idea."[8]

Byrkit added,

"...instead of having a script, each actor was given a page of notes each day with their back story or sort of motivation for the night. But they wouldn't know what the other actors had received so it had a very natural, very spontaneous collision of motivations that ended up being what you see on film; obviously guided by a very strict outline that we have been working on for about a year that tracked all the clues and the puzzles and all the rehearsals and things like that. But the actors weren't aware of those, those things happened because we were sort of guiding them through it."

When asked whether the actors were people whom Byrkit knew pretty well, he answered, "Yeah exactly. They were just friends that I knew I could just call up and say, 'Show up at my house in a couple days. I can't really tell you what we're doing, trust me I'm not going to kill you. It should be fun!' And they didn't know each other before they got to my house and so I had to pick people that seemed to be like they could be couples, seemed like they could be best friends and that I just knew were up to the task of jumping into it."[8]

Interviewer Nell Minow confessed her reaction to the actors' relationships: "I just assumed that they all knew each other very well because they fell into the kinds of rhythms that old friends have." Byrkit replied, "That's just casting great people that could do that. Just five minutes after they arrived at my house they had to pretend to be married and lovers and best friends."[8]

Reviewer Matt Prigge praised the choice of casting and their actions: "Byrkit ... focuses not on brainiacs, as in Primer, but on smart but mostly under-informed NPR types, who know enough to slowly piece all this together but not enough that they don't usually descend into blabbering, shouting and drinking. Indeed, Coherence is largely improvised, with a game cast first believably under-reacting to some weird business with laughter and disbelief, then always maintaining a degree of levity (read: jokes and occasional put-downs) even when stuff has gotten real."[9]

Writing

Ryan Lattanzio wrote, "Byrkit brought eight unwitting actors to his Santa Monica home, threw them a few red herrings and set them loose for five days knowing that the film could evolve organically, like great jazz, if he kept his players in the dark. But he and co-storywriter Alex Manugian weren't just making it up as they went along." Byrkit told him that his desire was "to strip down a film set to the bare minimum: getting rid of the script, getting rid of the crew."

Byrkit added, "...instead of a script I had my own 12-page treatment that I spent about a year working on. It outlined all of the twists, and reveals, and character arcs and pieces of the puzzle that needed to happen scene-by-scene. But each day, instead of getting a script, the actors would get a page of notes for their individual character, whether it was a backstory or information about their motivations. They would come prepared for their character only. They had no idea what the other characters received, so each night there were completely real reactions, and surprises and responses. This was all in the pursuit of naturalistic performances. The goal was to get them listening to each other, and engaged in the mystery of it all."[10]

Actor Brendon discussed the improvisational style of the dialogue with CraveOnline journalist Fred Topel, who asked: "I understand the way Coherence was done was that everyone got notecards about their characters and the scenes. What was on your notecards?"

Brendon replied, "I can't remember now, but every day we had five different things that we had to convey... but I do know that Jim [Byrkit], and then Alex [Manugian], the other writer, had to make sure that we were all on point. So it was just a matter of getting that information out. ... Since there was no script, I had no idea how it ended. ... When I saw the movie, I'm like, 'Oh shit, this is awesome!' ... To be quite honest with you, I never really knew what was going on fully until I saw the movie done."[11]

Filming

Principal photography took place over the course of five nights in Byrkit's house.[7]

An interviewer asked Byrkit, "Did you run into any unexpected problems in filming?"

Byrkit admitted, "... you're constantly dealing with unexpected things. One night we tried to shoot outside and we had to make the whole thing look completely desolate and the power being off; that was the one night that we had another movie shooting on our street. So the whole street is completely ablaze with lights and hundreds of extras." Another team was shooting a Snickers commercial. "We would be right in the middle of the dramatic scenes and there would be another knock on the door that would just scare the hell out of everybody..."[8]

Inspirations and themes

Byrkit told an interviewer for Spinning Platters, "Well, we came up with the premise in my living room, where the movie is shot. A couple years ago we were trying to think about what a good low budget, or no budget, movie would be. And, since we didn't have any resources, I had to think of what we actually had. We had a camera. We had some actors who were pretty good, and we had a living room. So we had to find out how to make a living room feel like more than just a living room. And, that led to a whole Twilight Zone type story... I was craving a more naturalistic type of dialogue, where people overlap and it's very messy, where people talk more like real humans talk. And so, we planned the story for a year, including the twists and turns and reversals and betrayals so that we had a really tight puzzle – almost like a fun house that we knew we could lead the actors through."[12]

Some reviewers have suggested that Byrkit was influenced by the eeriness of The Twilight Zone and/or the mind-challenging complexities of the science fiction film Primer.[7][9][13][14][15]

Byrkit answered one interviewer: "Twilight Zone, for sure. Primer wasn't really an influence so much as it was a sign to us that maybe there was an audience for this kind of movie. The actual movie itself is so different than ours that it wasn't as much of an influence as, say, Carnage by Roman Polanski, or other non-sci-fi movies."[7]

Reception

Critical reception for Coherence has been predominantly positive and the film currently holds a rating of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 74 reviews.[16][17]

Much of the film's praise centered upon its cast, which Bloody Disgusting and Fangoria cited as a highlight.[18][19] Film School Rejects gave Coherence a positive review, stating that the film's cast was "remarkably grounded for how complicated and bizarre the story is."[20]

Dread Central commented on the film's themes and wrote, "What's frightening about the story is how willing the characters are to abandon the reality they know in favor of one that may be a little more appealing. Whether that's a byproduct of the comet and the rift it creates or caused by the characters undermining everyone else around them to get the life they really want is the fundamental idea of Coherence and what makes it so unsettling."[21]

Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly praised the film, granting it a B+ rating: "In an impressive big-screen debut from James Ward Byrkit, eight friends discover metaphysics on their menu when a passing comet creates a set of doppelgängers down the road, enjoying their own identical soiree. Byrkit makes the most of the claustrophobic one-house setting, ratcheting up the dread and paranoia as his characters make a string of seemingly reasonable but ultimately wrongheaded decisions. The star-free cast is great too, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer vet Nicholas Brendon poking fun at himself by playing an actor who used to be on a TV show... Coherence is a satisfying and chilling addition to the ever-growing pal-ocalypse subgenre. And really, you have to love a film that not only explains the concept of Schrödinger's cat but also includes a joke about it ("I'm allergic!").[22]

Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter also enjoyed the film: "An ingenious micro-budget science-fiction nerve-jangler which takes place entirely at a suburban dinner party, Coherence is a testament to the power of smart ideas and strong ensemble acting over expensive visual pyrotechnics... A group of eight friends gather for dinner... Marital tensions and sexual secrets sizzle just below the surface, but relationship drama is soon overshadowed by astrological weirdness when a comet passes close to Earth, shutting down power supplies and phone connections... It slowly becomes clear that the fabric of reality has been radically remixed by the comet's arrival. We are definitely not in Kansas any more... Byrkit only gave his cast limited information about the narrative loops and swerves ahead, encouraging a semi-improvised naturalism that feels authentically tense."[14]

Matt Zoller Seitz, editor-in-chief of Roger Ebert's website, gives the movie three gold stars and writes that the film "is proof that inventive filmmakers can do a lot with a little... [but] none of the movie's technical or artistic shortcomings prove to be deal breakers. Once Coherence delves into its premise, the viewer is bound to come down with a bad case of the creeps. This is a less-is-more science fiction-horror tale... And it's genuinely more of a horror film than a suspense or "terror" film because, while there's some violence, the source of unease is philosophical."[23]

Ryan Lattanzio of Indiewire praised the film's originality: "Coherence is not just smart science fiction: it's a triumph of crafty independent filmmaking, made with few resources and big ambition. Gotham-nominated debut director James Ward Byrkit stripped his vision down to the barest of bones to achieve a mind-shifting, metaphysical freakout about a dinner party gone cosmically awry. This film explodes with ideas, and it has that thing we always hope for at the movies: the element of surprise."[10]

The reviewer for Salon was ambivalent: "After the fundamental problem of Coherence has become clear, or clear-ish – there's another dinner party, at that other house, that looks an awful lot like this one – the movie becomes slightly too much like an unfolding mathematical puzzle, although an ingenious one that reaches a chilling conclusion. Notes appear before they are written, the significance of those numbered photographs comes into focus through a series of neat twists, and while the characters are half aware that their actions are being shaped by a space-time continuum whose cause-and-effect relationship has gone awry, that's not enough to stop them."[24]

Accolades

See also

References

  1. ↑ "COHERENCE (15)". British Board of Film Classification. January 26, 2015. Retrieved January 26, 2015.
  2. ↑ "Coherence (2014)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 21, 2014.
  3. ↑ Wiseman, Andreas. "Independent to sell Coherence". Screen Daily. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  4. ↑ Hunter, Rob. "'Coherence' Trailer Teases a Film That Engages Your Mind Before Bending It". FSR. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  5. 1 2 Topel, Fred. "Fantastic Fest 2013: James Ward Byrkit & Emily Foxler on Coherence". CraveOnline. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  6. ↑ Brown, Todd. "COHERENCE: Watch The Theatrical Trailer For James Ward Byrkit's Stellar Indie SciFi". Twitch Film. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Tobias, Scott (June 26, 2014). "How James Ward Byrkit constructed Coherence". The Dissolve. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Minow, Nell (2014). "Interview: James Ward Byrkit of Coherence". BeliefNet. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  9. 1 2 Prigge, Matt (June 19, 2014). "Review: 'Coherence' is a mind-blower that's actually mind-blowing". Metro. Metro International. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  10. 1 2 Lattanzio, Ryan (October 23, 2014). "How Gotham Nominee James Ward Byrkit Made Coherence in 5 Days with No Script or Budget". Thompson on Hollywood. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  11. ↑ Topel, Fred (June 20, 2014). "Coherence: Nicholas Brendon on Schrodinger's Cat and Buffy". CraveOnline. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  12. ↑ LIffmann, Chad (June 23, 2014). "Spinning Platters Interview: James Ward Byrkit, Writer/Director, Coherence". Spinning Platters. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  13. ↑ Barone, Matt (June 20, 2014). "Permanent Midnight: On Coherence, a Must-See Twilight Zone Homage For the Bourgeoisie". Complex. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  14. 1 2 Dalton, Stephen (2014-06-13). "Coherence: Film Review: Cosmic Catastrophe comes to Dinner in first-time director James Ward Byrkit's Smart, Spooky, Low-Budget Sci-Fi Shocker". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  15. ↑ Feldberg, Isaac (June 21, 2014). "Coherence Review". We Got This Covered. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  16. ↑ Prime, Samuel B. "Fantastic Fest 2013: Coherence, Patrick, Why Don't You Play in Hell?, & The Congress". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  17. ↑ "Coherence". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
  18. ↑ Macomber, Shawn. "COHERENCE (Fantastic Fest Movie Review)". Fangoria. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  19. ↑ Cooper, Patrick. "[Fantastic Fest '13 Review] Get Paranoid As Hell with the Twisty Sci-Fi Thriller Coherence". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  20. ↑ Treveloni, Michael. "Fantastic Fest: Coherence is an Excellent, Comprehensible Mess". FSR. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  21. ↑ Tinnin, Drew. "Coherence (review)". Dread Central. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  22. ↑ Collis, Clark (June 12, 2014). "Coherence (2014)". Entertainment Weekly: 50.
  23. ↑ Seitz, Matt Zoller (June 20, 2014). "Coherence". www.rogerebert.com. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  24. ↑ O'Hehir, Andrew (June 19, 2014). "Coherence puts a strange, sci-fi twist on the dinner party movie". Salon. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
  25. 1 2 "Coherence Trailer Introduces Psychological Puzzle". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  26. ↑ "Sitges - 46ed. Festival Internacional de Catalunya (11/10 - 20/10)". Sitges Film Festival. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
  27. 1 2 "And the winners are...". IFF. Retrieved 8 June 2014.

External links

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