Endless Possibilities, by Reed Lackey

The best science fiction operates on two levels: limitations and possibilities. Mostly the limitations are human ones while the possibilities are scientific ones. Coherence is a film that has a strong handle on both. It largely takes place in one room… sort of… and yet, seemingly points to nearly endless differences between reality and understanding.

It’s challenging to discuss this film without ruining some of its surprise, which is a huge component of why it is so entertaining. It begins with a simple dinner party among friends on a night when a rare comet is passing visibly overhead. Early in the evening, the power blips out, which sends our characters on a bit of a quest to see how their neighbors are doing, whereupon they discover that there is only one house down the street which still has power. To say anything more would be to ruin an intensely imaginative, often frightening and frequently thrilling story.

The film’s creation itself was something of an experiment, with the actors not given a standard script but rather a sequence of directives for each day of shooting, wherein they improvised their dialogue based on their individual motivations. Although that meta-knowledge informs the structure of the film we see, it doesn’t define it. You could easily believe that every facet of this film was deliberately calculated, given how many twists, reveals, surprises and diversions it sends its audience through.

Anchoring the performances, which are all highly believable, is the primary lead, Emily Baldoni. She is our primary surrogate and the lens through which we try to understand what is happening to these people in this suddenly atypical suburban world. She leads a cast that is expected to operate in subtleties, and who all do so with incredible ease.

Writer/Director James Ward Byrkit sought to make the most interesting film he could if confined essentially to a single setting. He largely succeeds. There may be some who find the persistent fluctuations in what information we’ve seen to be reliable and what isn’t frustrating, but most will likely be excited by the game of trying to stay one step ahead of this film’s reality.

In many ways, this is an understated science fiction drama. But where it counts, it’s also a horror story. It asks big questions about whether or not we are truly our own or whether we are merely bi-products of our culture, our surroundings and even our chosen relationships. The conclusion that the film comes to about how we respond to our own fickle natures is one of its most effective and horrifying elements. It is a provocative and rewarding experience and one of the most inventive science fiction stories in years.