James Ward Byrkit provides us with a naturalistic perspective of the group the camera feels handheld and bobs along in the characters’ wake when they leave the house to inspect the neighbouring one. This is where the film excels and the banality of the dinner party breaks up for something more portentous. Emily always seems to have the answers for these phenomena though, as history points these inexplicable incidents toward the passing of the comet. The night has already taken on a sinister edge when the screens of mobile phones spontaneously crack, no internet service is available and all the power shuts down in the house. The comet is the catalyst which exposes an inexorable string of parallel realities, all tangible and in walking distance of one another (literally, these parallel clusters of lives are mirrored back to one another in every house along the neighbourhood) and they serve to frighten the characters into seeing themselves endlessly reflected back, albeit with some alteration in the behaviour of their ‘second’ selves.Īlthough Beth is superstitious and invests in New Age theories such as herbal potions and feng shui, Emily ( Emily Baldoni) is ultimately the most pragmatic and discerning of the bunch, basing her ideas on historical facts.

The narrative spans one night in which all the characters gather together for a meal at Beth ( Elizabeth Gracen) and Hugh’s ( Hugo Armstrong) house, though with the event of a comet passing the earth, visible in the night sky, this event changes the fabric of each character’s life and becomes a kind of marker or signal for organised chaos. Coherence is a film which gains momentum from the decay of its own narrative structure.

Coherence 2013