Director: James Ward Byrkit
Stars: Nicholas Brendon, Emily Foxler, Maury Sterling, Lorene Scafaria, Elizabeth Gracen, Hugo Armstrong, Alex Manugian, Lauren Maher
While having a dinner party, eight friends witness a comet passing overhead. Then, there’s a powercut, but one house still has lights…when they go to investigate reality starts to bend and they question who they are.
I studied Philosophy and I like films that play with the mind. Coherence does this by introducing alternate realities, parallel timelines etc, and at times it is hard to keep track of everything that’s going on. It takes a little while for the film to get going as the characters need to be introduced, but the mystery is drip fed until the truth gets revealed, and as that happens it’s a dramatic scene.
However, I feel that the length of the film is too short to develop the concept fully. I wasn’t a fan of the ending as it felt like it wanted to be punchy, but it had little impact for me. In some ways this isn’t so much as a movie as a thought experiment put to film, and in that respect it’s interesting if you like that sort of thing. I’m not sure it’s so good as a film though. The acting is okay, but the characters didn’t leap off the screen at me, and the dialog was fairly average.
It’s worth watching if you like films that explore philosophical concepts, and it’s not a huge time investment, but I think a lot of people would feel bored and rather nonplussed about the whole thing, kinda like Primer. I think it’s a film for a very select audience.
