First the plot. A bunch of middle class Americans meet up in at the house of a guy who isn't around for dinner - skeletons in the closet all over the place. There is an asteroid passing overhead and weird things start happening. Are these things connected? Obviously. But how? And what - if anything - can anyone do to stop this fun evening turning into a nightmare? Note - stars Nicholas Brendon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame. Good to see he's still in acting!
The coherence of the film's title refers to quantum coherence, which isn't actually what the film's doing - but we'll get away with them misrepresenting the Copenhagen interpretation of Schrodinger's Cat if they can tell a decent mystery thriller. Sadly, I just didn't buy into the concept of the film, the reason any of it was happening, the decisions any of the characters make and the the way everyone acts throughout. Pretty damming I guess.
Coherence was at least filmed in an interesting way. The director makes use of techniques similar to those employed in the production of The Blair Witch Project (of which there is a remake coming - shoot me now). The actors were given character descriptions for the roles, and then provided with snippets of information before being encouraged to largely improvise. Sort of like playing Dungeons and Dragons I guess. Now that's ok in theory, but it doesn't really work when you're trying to tell a story about quantum theory and you have different versions of people flying all over the place. It gets very confusing very fast, and when someone finally does sit down with a book of science to try to explain everything, it turns into the dullest and most forced exposition scene since Basil Exposition. It's mainly because of this I think that I didn't buy into anything that was going on.
See when The Blair Witch Project did this it made sense because the confusion of the protagonists was crucial in feeding into the overall tone. You can't have it both ways. Either embrace the confusion and have your characters slowly lose their minds to the confusion of the mystery that's engulfing them (Primer); OR have a scientist come and explain everything and have them try to put the universe right (all of Star Trek). Coherence is made in a way that suits the former, but plotted in a way that insists on the later.
Overall very disappointing. Coherence messes up its own tone and can't bring itself to not have a neatly wrapped-up explanation for what's going on. It isn't enough to leaving the fate of our protagonist and where she might be as an open question in the final scene, by that point the mystery has well and truly vanished.
In other words, Coherence is too incoherent.
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