Coherence (2013) Critic Reviews

Coherence presents a far-fetched premise at the outset, only to slyly smuggle in some remarkably relatable matters of the heart along the way.

WILLIAM GOSS
July 09, 2014

Its success may depend on how alert you’re feeling, but for once you can’t complain that a movie hasn’t given your synapses a thorough workout.

MIKE MCCAHILL
February 18, 2015

If Rod Serling had hired Robert Altman to direct a "Twilight Zone" episode, it might have turned out something like this.

MARC MOHAN
July 10, 2014

The wordy end product may be short on demons and murderous droids, yet Coherence is a satisfying and chilling addition to the ever-growing pal-ocalypse subgenre.

CLARK COLLIS
June 11, 2014

An ambitious physics and time-bending, relationship drama with solid performances from the two main characters.

KIM NEWMAN
February 09, 2015

Byrkit’s film is very much its own thing. It’s an urbane dinner-party movie that turns into something magnificent, terrible, and strange – and yet it never quite stops being an urbane dinner-party movie, never lets up its tone of ironic refinement. Coherence is a gentle film, but you walk away from it with your brain on fire.

BILGE EBIRI
June 10, 2014

An ingenious micro-budget science-fiction nerve-jangler which takes place entirely at a suburban dinner party, Coherence is a testament to the power of smart ideas and strong ensemble acting over expensive visual pyrotechnics

STEPHEN DALTON
June 19, 2014

After the fundamental problem of Coherence has become clear, or clear-ish – there’s another dinner party, at that other house, that looks an awful lot like this one – the movie becomes slightly too much like an unfolding mathematical puzzle, although an ingenious one that reaches a chilling conclusion

ANDREW O'HEHIR
June 19, 2014

Byrkit’s parable about choices and how they make us who we are has an eerie potency.

LESLIE FELPERIN
October 25, 2015

Byrkit and his actors successfully build a sense of tension, and then dread, from what appears to be an extremely limited budget. Indeed, the movie was shot primarily in his own living room

ELIZABETH WEITZMAN
June 19, 2014

For a sci-fi indie of vast ambition but limited means, Coherence does a sterling job with coherence.

JOSHUA ROTHKOPF
June 17, 2014

It feels like this is a short film idea stretched to feature length, and the padding doesn't work.

GABE TORO
June 18, 2014

The result is an uncommonly clever genre movie, reliant not on special effects — of which there are basically none — but on heavy doses of paranoia.

A A DOWD
June 18, 2014

The film's impression of personas is less traditionally sinister than representative of its inquiry into identity and what happens when social barriers begin to fall away.

NICK PRIGGE
June 15, 2014

The Rod Serling tension Byrkit is angling for never quite arrives, nor does any real Borgesian frisson. But thanks to its social setting, it does offer a vivid and perhaps intentional satirical portrait of L.A. culture

MICHEAL ATKINSON
June 17, 2014

Coherence devolves into a noisy, cluttered portrait of dysfunction, all clenched fists and shouted expletives. The twists may be novel, but the talk, and the upshot, are all too dispiritingly familiar

JUSTIN CHANG
June 25, 2014

At some point, though, Mr. Byrkit turns one too many corners (characters, meanwhile, begin bustling in and out of rooms like Marx Brothers extras), and what began as a nifty puzzle feels more like a trap.

MANOHLA DARGIS
June 19, 2014

Writer/director James Ward Byrkit, in his feature debut, achieves effective chills with only eight actors and a living room, intermixing quantum physics (shout-outs range from Schrödinger’s cat to “Sliding Doors”) with the very mundane human tendency toward bad judgment calls in a crisis.

SARA STEWART
June 18, 2014

The performances... are solid, and the conceit is alluringly mind-bending without ever seeming off-puttingly brainy

ROBERT ABELE
June 19, 2014