Susan Granger’s review of “Coherence” (Oscilloscope Laboratories)
If you enjoy a cerebral twist with your sci-fi, try this metaphysical thriller. Set at a countryside home, it follows a casual gathering of eight friends that coincides with Miller’s Comet passing overhead in the night sky. As the evening begins, Emily (Emily Baldoni), a ballet dancer who inadvertently jettisoned her best chance for a career, is upset that Laurie (Lauren Maher), the flirtatious, former girlfriend of her boyfriend Kevin (Maury Sterling) is joining them for dinner as the guest of Amir (Alex Manguian). There’s also Mike (Nicholas Brendon), an actor on TV’s “Roswell,” and his wife Lee (Lorene Scafaria), along with Hugh (Hugo Armstrong) and Beth (Elizabeth Gracen).
When the astronomic anomaly knocks out the electricity, there’s a scramble for candles and the generator. Various members of the four couples react differently, but they’re all intrigued by a house two blocks down the street that seems to have lights. Various expeditions occur – until they discover that it replicates their house with alternate versions of themselves enjoying a dinner party. Not surprisingly, that ignites rampant paranoia as their concept of reality is challenged.
Coincidentally, the brother of one of the guests is a physics professor who left a book explaining the Schrodinger’s Cat theory, which goes something like this: a cat is put in a box along with a vial of poison. Ordinary thinking dictates that there’s a 50-50 chance the cat will live or die. However, quantum physics postulates that both realities exist simultaneously, so it’s only when the box is opened that they collapse into a single event. As one guest notes, you saw Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Sliding Doors” (1998), it’s somewhat the same paradox.
Cleverly written and directed by James Ward Byrkit, it’s filled with new faces, except for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” vet Nicholas Brendon, who remarks, “The whole night we’ve been worried that there might be some dark version of ourselves out there….(but) what if we’re the dark versions?”
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Coherence” is a strangely subtle, supernatural 6. It’s a contemporary mindbender.
