Coherence

I am a sucker for a good sci-fi movie that takes something completely unreal and somehow makes it feel real. And I think that is what Coherence does so well.

To me, the whole movie feels like a fantastical way of visualizing Schrödinger’s cat. You have the cat in the box with the poison, and as long as the box stays closed, the cat is both alive and dead. Both possibilities exist because nothing has happened yet to confirm one of them. Then you open the box, observe what happened, and one possibility becomes your reality.

That is basically what Coherence feels like, except instead of one cat, you have all these different versions of the same people, the same house, and the same night. Every possible outcome exists somewhere, and the characters keep moving between them without fully understanding what is happening.

And honestly, on a first watch, you are going to miss so much.

I definitely did.

I did not notice things like the men having their shirts buttoned differently depending on which house they came from. I was not paying attention to that at all. I was already using all my brain power trying to understand who was who, which house we were in, and whether the people in the room were even the same people we started with.

It is a very mentally heavy movie. You cannot really watch it casually while checking your phone or doing something else. You have to pay attention to the conversations, the objects, the clothes, and all the small differences. Even then, it is still confusing.

But the confusion is also what makes it so entertaining.

The movie constantly makes you feel like you are almost understanding it, and then something happens that makes you question everything again. At some point, you stop knowing which version of anyone you are watching. You also start wondering whether it even matters anymore, because every version believes they are the original one.

The ending confused me a lot, but I also think it is supposed to. Schrödinger’s problem is confusing. Quantum mechanics is confusing. Making an entire movie out of the idea that multiple realities can exist at once is obviously going to be confusing.

I do not think this is the kind of movie where you finish it and immediately understand everything. It is the kind of movie where you finish it, sit there for a minute, search for explanations, realize you missed twenty details, and then want to watch it again.

And even though most of the movie is just people talking inside a house, it never really became boring for me. It kept me interested because I was constantly trying to solve it.

I think Coherence is one of those movies that becomes better the more you think about it. I was confused while watching it, confused after watching it, and I am still thinking about it now, which is probably the best compliment I can give it.