Coherence Explained: What’s Up With the Ending?

Emily (Emily Foxler) arrives at the house of her friends Mike (Nicholas Brendon) and Lee (Lauryn Scafaria). There are also five other people who know each other well: spouses Hugh (Hugo Armstrong) and Beth (Elizabeth Graysen), Emily’s boyfriend Kevin (Maury Sterling) and Amir (Alex Manoogian), who arrives with Kevin’s ex-girlfriend Laurie (Lauren Meher).

Well, you know, the usual kind of company, in which there are a couple of everyone’s favorites, one aunt who is obsessed with esotericism, feng shui and all sorts of rubbish nutrition, one or two skeletons in the closet and several complicated relationships with a long history.

At some point, it turns out that all of their mobile phones have lost their signal. The company attributes this to Miller’s Comet flying over the Earth, as reported by the media.

After a while, the lights in the house turn off. The company does not lose heart, lights candles, and Hugh and Amir go outside and see that there is a light in the house nearby. Hugh says that he wants to call his physicist brother, whom he promised to tell about all sorts of oddities associated with the comet, and they go to this house. On this adventure of the whole company is just beginning.

***

An interesting project. James Ward Birkit is the screenwriter of the wonderful cartoon “Rango” by Gore Verbinski. James also works closely with the theater, and at one time he had the idea to make a film in an absolutely theatrical manner – for two kopecks, but to make it interesting.

The script for “Connections” (original name Coherence is translated as coherence – the principle of the interconnection of everything that exists, but United Statesn distributors decided that an unnecessarily tricky word would scare away the audience, so everything was simplified) Birkit wrote together with Alex Manugyan, who played one of the roles in this film.

The whole picture cost $ 50 thousand (the cost of shooting a small amateur film), it was filmed all five days in the director’s own house, and the script only set the direction of the action, because Birkit gave many things to the improvisation of the actors.

Actors – mostly little-known, serial. Well, except that Emilia Baldoni (here she is declared in the cast as Emilia Foxler) more or less appeared in famous TV shows, Nicholas Brandon flashed in Buffy, and Lauren Meher played a certain Scarlet in four Pirates of the Caribbean.

For the rest – filmed in the director’s house, by the director himself on a handheld camera, the actors were asked not to restrain their improvisational abilities – and what did we get?

And we got a very well-made and quite exciting fantasy thriller. Where there are no special effects at all, where everything rests solely on actors, scripts and simple episodes, but the result impressed me.

No, there is nothing special here, but this is a very good movie that offers a curious interpretation of events, and it was quite interesting for me to watch this personally. And – yes, I had three options for the development of the plot and I never guessed right. And – yes, an open ending, on the one hand, may disappoint someone, but as for me – this is the most correct thing that could be thought of.

I like it. Characteristic characters, interesting relationships, a well twisted fantasy component with this world multiplying comet, curious time paradoxes, and it’s all beautifully woven into the story of an ordinary dinner party.

It was certainly more interesting to watch than some regular mainstream. In terms of the style of the production, it reminded me very much of the completely theatrical film “The Man from Earth”, which I also liked, but everything is noticeably more famously twisted there.

Nevertheless, “Communication” is quite worthy of viewing for those viewers who love interestingly constructed and intelligent fantasy thrillers (there are very few thrillers here, in fact), filmed in the format of a performance. I only welcome this if it is well done. And this movie is really well done.

PS I remember Sarik Andreasyan saying something like: “We had only seven million, so we removed the Defenders.” And it was only $50,000. So they removed “Communication”. And compare the result. Any questions? No questions.

 

Communication / Coherence movie meaning

Director: James Ward Birkit Cast: Emily Foxler, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brandon, Lauryn Scafaria, Elizabeth Gracen, Hugo Armstrong, Alex Manoogian, Lauren Meher, Akilla Zoll, Carrie Patterson

Budget: $50 thousand,

Fantastic thriller, USA-UK, 2012, 89 min.

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