Coherence (2014) - James Ward Byrkit

On the night of an astronomical event, a comet passing close by earth, eight old friends get together for a dinner party in an effort to reconnect.  As they sit down to start dinner, the astronomical phenomenal sets off a bizarre serious of increasingly troublesome events.  James Ward Byrkit's Coherence is a sharp,mind-bender of a film that is never particularly brainy, but intelligent and focused.  It's a hard film to talk about without given away the basic conceit, but the film manages to deliver a lot of tense moments that firmly create a sense of uncertainty to its narrative.  The film is shot completely in the handheld and while its intricate and well designed, it does come off as a little detracting.  Coherence isn't defined easily by genre, having a sci-fi premise with horror elements but what makes it a good film is the human relationship drama that is much stronger than most films of this ilk.  The performances are all high quality making it fairly engrossing and a lot of fun. While I wouldn't say Coherence is a great film, it is certainly worth seeing because of its fairly original mind-bender concept. 

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