Review of Coherence (2014) by Eric H — 24 Jan 2015

I knew I was going to love this movie when I heard the premise (and by premise, I mean low-budget sci-fi mind-bending flick with unscripted dialogue - not the actual plot of the movie, which would've spoiled some of the surprises), and from the opening couple scenes. It's refreshing as hell to see dialogue so natural. It can be annoying when people are talking over each other, but it's undeniably organic, and is one of the main reasons the movie feels so real. And that realness is what imbues it with such a sense of dread.

Let's take a moment to appreciate how this is the most low-budget alternate universe movie I've ever seen. Most alt-universe stories, like Fringe etc., are very high-budget, because they're depicting how the government has changed or something, how the world around has changed due to a change in history. There may still be lots of things to explore on a character level, but there's some grander plot. In Coherence, though, it's just a bunch of doppelgangers in a bunch of identical houses.

There's something that almost all sci-fi movies like this seem to do halfway through, or maybe 2/3 through. They'll have been chugging along steadily for half the movie with a fairly simple but interesting plot, having fun exploring the psychological ramifications of whatever it is that's going on, but then suddenly there'll be a big plot twist or a revelation that will change everything, revealing that a lot more is going on than the audience and characters thought.

Late revelations and sudden expansions of scope like that often screw up the movie because they'll show that the filmmakers are more interested in plot and shocking the audience than showing actual character growth. That can work, kind of, like in the case of The One I Love, which has some third-act reveals that make the movie a mind-bending story instead of a deeply psychological exploration. The movie still manages to pull off the character stuff, but it's a bit weakened. And Allegiant, the third Divergent book, expands the scope to such an extent that the previous two books are rendered insignificant and meaningless.

Somehow, Coherence managed to have it both ways. I was a little quizzical when the twist happened that there are more than just two houses (when Em is looking at the numbers and they realize that they're all from four different groups), but the movie pulled it off because, as far as I can see, there were no logical gaps at all, and the movie was still focused on the things that can happen, psychologically, as a result of that revelation.

Another fascinating thing is how Em is the main character, even if you don't really realize it until the last act. If you simply follow Em throughout the movie, you can always keep track of which house you're in and who's who. I might not have liked that at the halfway point, since Em isn't the most likable character and all the characters are interesting in their own right, but in the last act, the film snaps into focus as we realize that Em is the center of all of this. It's empowering, shocking, and terrifying all the same time when we watch Em leave her friends forevermore and start to seek out a replacement. And even though I'm not totally sure what the very last scene implies - did the alternate Em escape, or is it a third Em, or what exactly - I loved it. It's an appropriately haunting way to end the movie.

And the one thing I haven't mentioned much is just how this film made me feel. It was so disorienting, and confusing, but FUN at the same time, and I felt like life wasn't real anymore or something when I finished it. It was so thought-provoking, and it's definitely one of my favorite sci-fi movies now.