Coherence

"How well do you know your friends?" This query, spotted in the theatrical trailer for James Ward Byrkit and Alex Manugian's low-budget, high-concept sci-fi film "Coherence," turns out to be essential to the film's core concept. Extend the question a little further, as the film does, and you arrive at the next logical uncertainty: How well does anybody know him- or herself?

Told the way a "bottle episode" of a series like "The Twilight Zone" could be, at a dinner party attended by four couples, "Coherence" blends the far-out with the quotidian. As the friends relax around a table -- carping at each other, rolling their eyes at how one guest has brought a batch of homemade drugs to offer while another has hooked up with his buddy's former flame -- a comet passes near the Earth. The strange phenomena the comet produces puzzles, then alarms, the group; soon, fault lines and underlying tensions begin to flare up, and the possibility of some serious violence looms ever larger.

This is the sort of film that starts off as a puzzle (a deliberate choice, as we learn in the audio commentary), but as pieces start to fall together the film yanks the rug out from under you -- and then does so again, each time a new clue about what's happening emerges. Mike (Nicholas Brendon), an alcoholic, is the first to tread close to the line between the light of rationality and the darkness of preemptive aggression; he goes so far as to contemplate blackmail and murder. Hugh (Hugo Armstrong) has a physicist brother who has warned him that this night might see some strange occurrences; he'd be a good person to get on the phone -- only, once odd things start happening, electricity and cell signal both fail. The entire city has gone dark, except for one lone house up the street...

Comparisons to "Twilight Zone"'s classic episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" spring instantly to mind, and to an extent they are justified. Wild theories are no sooner voiced than they are fearfully embraced -- only to shift as new events unfold and familiar friends start to come under suspicion. (Did Hugh's wife, Beth (Elizabeth Gracen), a new agey sort, drug the food? Is Kevin (Maury Sterling) about to reignite the spark that still smolders between himself and Laurie (Lauren Maher), who happens to be Amir's (co-writer Managuan) new girlfriend -- and if he does, what is Kevin's current girlfriend, the much put-upon Em (Emily Foxler), going to do about it?)

But "Coherence" cruises past such ready comparisons, entering seriously mind-blowing territory in a tense, well-paced story. The improvisational style keeps the performances edgy, lending extra zing to the production.

This release includes an unusually gripping audio commentary that relates plenty of amusing and enlightening anecdotes about the production and the story (you have to watch the film numerous times to pick up on all the clues Byrkit and Manugian point out here). Other special features include a behind-the-scene featurette, a camera test made a year before the five-day shoot, and the theatrical trailer.

This little film never got a wide release, which is a pity. Fans of intelligent speculative fiction will want to check out this DVD and then keep close watch for whatever Byrkit and Managuan get up to next.

"Coherence"
DVD
$34.99
http://www.oscilloscope.net/films/filter/dvd