Though I don’t really read that much original science-fiction any longer, I still go out of my way to put the most quirky and interesting science-fiction films to my watch list. This ultra low-budget film that has often been compared to Primer, perhaps the most convoluted science-fiction film ever made, certainly qualifies. It was apparently shot in director James Ward Byrkit’s own house over the course of five nights with no script and no crew. It went to win a number of awards and plenty of praise from critics, not bad for a directorial debut that was made with almost no money.

The film follows Emily who arrives at a friend’s house for a dinner party with a number of old friends. As the evening begins however a string of mysterious events start occurring, including mobile phones cracking for no apparent reason, all communications including Internet service being cut off and eventually even a power black out. We learn from their conversation that a comet is passing close to the Earth and that this may be the cause of the strange occurrences. Worse, there appears to be someone or something moving outside the house and behaving in an aggressive manner. When some of them leave the house to get help they realize that they are trapped within a strange zone in which different quantum realities overlap. This means that the other people out there are copies of themselves from a parallel reality, all of whom are just as confused and scared as they themselves are.

This scenario isn’t altogether unique but it’s certainly one way to use the idea of the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics in a film. The great strength of Coherence however is that it manages to build up a very weird situation in a very naturalistic manner. The plot isn’t bullet-proof as the characters seem unreasonably ready to react to their duplicates in a hostile manner, but on the whole they feel like real, ordinary people being thrust into a deeply disturbing situation and reacting to it in a realistic way. The characters have a decent group chemistry going on despite their being played by actors who apparently who don’t know each other and I really loved how the horror of the situation they find themselves in takes the form of slowly fraying relationships as the night wears them down.

The existentialist horror of meeting someone who is a perfect duplicate of yourself has popped up enough times in cinema to be a trope (notably for example in Enemy and The Double) and Coherence isn’t exactly an in-depth philosophical examination of the idea. But it does very nicely convey this sense of dread, especially when they start assuming that the duplicates are hostile and yet think and react in exactly the same way that they do themselves. The scene in which Emily and her boyfriend emotionally connect to one another as they reminisce over a past event only to slowly back away from each other without saying anything as they realize that the two of them are from different parallel worlds is pure gold.

Overall Coherence probably isn’t groundbreaking enough to be remembered for long. It’s no Primer in that regard. But it’s a perfectly cromulent science-fiction film and a wonderful example of how someone talented can do so much with so little.