Review: Coherence (2013)

Oh my God you guys. I watched the craziest movie the other night. You might remember a while ago I wrote a review for Compliance (2012) which was a recommendation from my Grampy. Only it took me forever to find, because he actually told me it was called Coercion. Well, it seems confusion runs in the family, because I decided that I’d actually watch that the other day, and well, I then proceeded to get that confused with Coherence. Still with me?

Coherence is a little low-budget Sci-Fi Thriller about a group of friends and ex-lovers who meet for a dinner party. There’s strangeness involved from the outset as a comet is passing by overhead, rendering phone lines and the internet useless. There are also reports of phone screens and other glass objects smashing without warning.

If you haven’t seen the movie before and think it sounds like something you’d like to watch, I really urge you to stop reading now and check it out. I won’t talk about spoilers here or anything, but it’s one of those movies best seen without any preconceptions or knowledge about the plot.

Which, in turn, makes this a really difficult movie to review! What I will say is that I’ve never seen anything like it before. Well, that’s a lie. Have you watched the comedy show, Community? Remember the episode about the darkest timeline, where they’re all rolling dice to see who should answer the door? That’s the first thing that came to my mind after watching Coherence.

The story itself is heavily dialogue driven, but at an hour and a half long, the time whizzes by. We get a very brief introduction to our main characters, and by the time the weirdness got cranked up I worried that was all we’d find out, but the movie does a great job of developing each of the characters as the movie goes on.

The ending to Coherence is definitely open to interpretation, and from what I could gather online it got a mixed reaction. Yes, this is the kind of movie you’re going to want to spend an hour looking up once it’s over!

So, this is a bit of a cop-out of a review, I know, but I really wanted to get other people’s thoughts on the movie. Hit us up in the comments section if you’ve seen it, if you don’t mind! If you need me, I’ll be trying to decide whether to track down and watch Coercion, in fear I’ll just add a fourth similar sounding movie into the mix.