Coherence
We're in a different reality because the reality where I am from, my best friend didn't sleep with my wife.
Directed by James Ward Byrkit
United States, 2013
Films involving parallel lives and the multiverse seem Everything, Everywhere, All at Once these days. Released in 2013, James Ward Byrkit’s film, Coherence, got there ahead of the Hollywood conveyor belt, with the exception perhaps of the execrable Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle, Sliding Doors (1998).
We have also been here before with the stripped down, low-budget dinner party drama, largely set in one room. Anyone familiar with this set-up will know that by dessert, relationships will have fallen apart and life will never quite be the same again. For a good example try Festen (The Celebration). For a bad example we have the eponymously named The Dinner Party and, erm…
Coherence begins with three couples arriving at the home of hosts, Lee and Mike. There is a palpable tension in the air, as Em (Emily Baldoni) is unhappy that her partner’s ex is joining them, and Beth (Elizabeth Gracen) is so distressed by the negative feng shui of the house that she’s taken to chugging ketamine and valerian cocktails. However, the focus of conversation is the fact that their cell phones have all dropped their signal which Em explains is due to the comet passing overhead that very evening. She then tells a story about a comet exploding over Siberia in 1908 which led to a series of bizarre events and behaviour, including a woman accusing her husband of being an imposter. And before the hors d’oeuvres are over, cell phones screens spontaneously crack, and we have a blackout.
The whole neighbourhood has gone dark with the exception of a single house up the street. The apparently obvious next step is for two of the men to go and investigate what’s going on there, in the hope of using their landline. After a lengthy pause Hugh (Hugo Armstrong) and Amir (Alex Manugian) return in an unsettled state with a box containing photographs of all eight dinner guests and a table tennis bat. That may seem odd, but stranger still the photos have numbers written on the back of them, in Em’s handwriting!
Without wanting to spoil the film too much, although by this point it is beginning to curdle, it turns out that the people in the neighbouring houses look very similar to our four couples. Actually, they are identical.
From here the melodrama rapidly ratchets up (or unravels) as we move into the world of parallel dimensions. If this sounds confusing you will be pleased to know that we are helped along with a large dollop of exposition in the form of a notebook left in a car by Hugh’s brother, who just happens to “hang out with all these theoretical physicists”.
So much exposition it felt like I was watching Dragonball Z. Something happens, then a character states aloud what has just happened. Like bruh... I have eyes - N
After reading a few paragraphs of said book the group are seemingly on doctorate-level terms with quantum mechanics* and decoherence.
Coherence is writer-director James Ward Byrkit’s debut feature film. His CV includes a role as conceptual consultant of the first three episodes of Pirates of the Caribbean – no further comment. For a film purporting to be a psychological thriller there are a few minutes of disquiet when the blackout hits, but you rapidly lose patience and interest in this bunch of sketchily-drawn and, to be frank, obnoxious collection of media-world stereotypes. There are a few laughs to be had but we’re not sure that is really the point.
The eerie, dark ambient score by Kristin Øhrn Dyrud attempts to chill the atmosphere with a pervasive sense of dead but is undermined by the increasingly unhinged narrative. Coherence was shot over five nights, the script was developed through improvisation, and it really shows. The performances have all the subtlety of a primary school play: a knock at the door gets the response, “Oh my God... who could it be?!!”. Mike, a recovering alcoholic, decides to deal with the situation by downing several bottles of wine and then planning to murder his twin.
Mike: If we're collapsing right now, I'm gonna collapse on them. I'm not gonna wait for them to collapse on us.
Hugh: Whoa, whoa, Mike.
Mike: I'll go over there and I'll just kill 'em.
The shakiness of the hand-held camera suggests that Beth was not the only one partaking of the ketamine cocktails. As the film runs out of time, and presumably money, the director puts his foot on the accelerator and we have characters joining and leaving the set with a frequency reminiscent of a West End theatrical farce.
Insecure about her relationship with her partner, Em started the film with an anecdote about her career as a professional dancer being wrecked by someone stealing her part. She finishes the film by going to laughably absurd lengths to ensure that nobody will ever stop her living her best life.
Of course the ending is ridiculous – and I mean ‘In the Earth’ ridiculous – although to be fair, that film was more entertaining in its outright silliness - S
The comet that triggers the events in Coherence is never named or identified. Here’s hoping it was the one spotted by Edmond Halley and we have a 76 year wait before this film crosses our screens again.
*For an illuminating primer on quantum physics the ReidsonFilm Podcast 2 is an essential listen.
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C - 58
T - 55
N - 48
S - 57
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Coming next … Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999)
