Coherence (2014, Dir. James Ward Byrkit):
Yeah we’re playing those mind games together
Projecting our images in space and in time
— John Lennon
Like the mysterious case of photographs that sparks the film’s plot, Coherence is a puzzle box — a mind-bender in which every convulsion of the story casts a new perspective on events that have gone before. Filmed on a micro-budget over five days, the movie’s set-up is disarmingly simple. Eight pals get together for a dinner on the night a comet passes in the vicinity of Earth, and before you can say “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” unsettling events accumulate: shattered cell phones, blackouts, sudden knocks on the door, houses down the street that may or may not be exactly the same as each other (right down to the occupants), and a physics book on Schrödinger’s cat that may explain the craziness.
Coherence takes its time to come to the point, and even though writer and director James Ward Byrkit plants clues throughout the first third of the movie, you may find your patience tried by the characters, who are more or less your standard wafty Northern Californian types: Em the moody dancer (Emily Baldoni), Beth the uptight health guru (Elizabeth Gracen), Kevin the dithering boyfriend (Maury Sterling), Laurie the arch ex-girlfriend (Lauren Maher), Lee the adorkable wife (Lorene Scafaria) and her boozy actor husband Mike (Nicholas Brendan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame — in a sly bit, his character announces he once starred in the Roswell TV series). Stick with it though, because Byrkit has a clear goal in mind: these vaguely dissatisfied hipsters will get their comeuppance as they fall prey to heady sci-fi quantum theories. Thrown for a loop with every revelation, they will cross the line between camaraderie and savagery, as if they’re in a blue-plate special version of Luis Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel. At one point Mike, debating the possibility of another version of himself, mutters, “If I’m losing it over there, I’m losing it here.” Kierkegaard, eat your heart out.
Byrkit certainly loves conundrums, and as a filmmaker he has a wonderful economy of style. He unveils the topsy-tervy rules of his universe (or should we say universes? To reveal the whole truth would be telling) succinctly through the most ordinary of items — glowsticks of different colors, scribbled-out messages, dice, a ping-pong paddle, a band-aid. The film’s best moments are when his chatty characters are stunned into silence, and his jittery handheld camera and abrupt cut-to-black transitions keep the tension bubbling.
For all the story’s alarming implications though, Byrkit is less interested in metaphysical quandaries than in throwing all the switches and levers on his puzzle-box. The film’s mechanics are a bit cold and confining, leaving little room for the humans to be anything other than pawns. At various times you might think to yourself, Why don’t they just get in a car and get the hell out of there? Byrkit is also less effective at maintaining coherence (pardon the pun) with his characters: one moment they’re bug-eyed and ready for violence, the next they’re bogged down in mumblecore soap opera. Of course one of the dominant themes of the movie is how one’s personality can shift with the barest nudge in time and place, but all the hemming and hawing slow the pace when the film should be hitting fifth gear.
“There is another theory: that two states continue to exist… separate and decoherent from each other, each creating a new branch of reality… based on the two outcomes. Quantum decoherence ensures that the different outcomes… have no interaction with each other.”
Still, all the actors are likable, including Baldoni, with whom we start and end the story. It takes a while for the narrative to trudge up to a crucial point, but once it does and — to paraphrase Harold Ramis from Ghostbusters — the streams get crossed, the subsequent roller-coaster ride is riveting, and belongs to Baldoni’s Em. One might wish that the breathless final passages of Coherence began a little earlier and lasted a little longer — as it is, the climax is rushed and the denouement sorely lacks an extra twist of the knife. Perhaps in one of those alternate universes Byrkit posits, there’s a version of this movie that fulfills all these wishes. Still, Coherence is a rare breed: an indie project that tackles big ideas and impresses you with its ambition.
