Coherence (2014)

Directed by James Ward Byrkit. Starring Emily Foxler, Hugo Armstrong, Maury Sterling, Lorene Scafaria, Nicholas Brendon, Alex Manugian, Lauren Maher, Elizabeth Gracen.

A dinner party among eight friends gets interrupted by a power outage, and when it’s noticed that one house down the street still has electricity, a pair of them venture out to investigate and ask to use the phone. When they return, they report a strange observation: the house also had a dinner table set for eight, and they’ve retrieved a box that contains numbered photographs of each of them. Low-budget, semi-improvisational science fiction head-scratcher with an intriguing setup is like the cinematic equivalent of math rock—able to be enjoyed on the Rod Serling-esque speculative level, but those who invest in the intricacies of the puzzle are apt to get more out of the experience. Writer/director Byrkit’s less-is-more strategy doesn’t do much to encourage that kind of next-level focus, however, and he makes the error of using the characters’ interpersonal drama to drive a few key decisions when too little groundwork is laid early on for clarity and attentiveness (I struggled to match names to faces, for example, so I was always “playing catch-up” whenever pairs broke off to question or criticize the behavior of others). Tension ebbs and flows, but at least interest never fully flags; I didn’t buy into a drastic character choice just prior to the conclusion, but the story exits on a chilly, bitter laugh, at least. The shaky handheld camerawork can become off-putting when it experiments with assertive angles and close-ups. Co-star Alex Manugian earned co-story credit. Premiered at Austin Fantastic Fest in 2013 before getting a commercial release the following year.

63/100