Exploring The Mind-Bending Concept Behind Coherence

If you like your popcorn with a side of quantum theory, Coherence might be the movie for you. This micro-budget flick has gained a cult following for how mind-bendingly confusing it is. As director James Ward Byrkit explains, though, once you look at the film the right way, everything clicks into place and it all makes sense. If you're ready for your a-ha moment, read on as we walk you through the key plot points and main themes in Coherence.

The Film Coherence Explained

Coherence follows a woman, Em, who joins 7 friends for a dinner party on the night a comet is passing very close to Earth. The comet causes an anomaly that allows the group to access alternate realities. The catch is that the anomaly sends you to different realities randomly—you have no control over where you end up.^{[1]
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Section 1 of 7:

Key Plot Points in Coherence

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The film is a hero's journey revolving around a single Em. According to Byrkit, the camera follows only one Em from the first frame to the last.^{[2]
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Research source} So if you've read fan theories that involve alternate Ems, they're wrong. No matter what happens, the story always follows the same Em, who is the hero of this story.
- There are plenty of sub-plots that involve other people in the story, but ultimately the other people in the story are only important in terms of their relationship to Em.
- While there are other characters who are coming into conflict, having discoveries, and going on journeys of their own, Em is the character around whom the entire movie becomes coherent.
- The director James Byrkit explains that the only way to bring some sense of clarity to the mess of switching realities was to focus on a single character.^{[3]
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- Conversely, you actually see 5 different versions of Hugh and Amir. The original Hugh and Amir that started in this house left and never returned to this reality—you never find out what happened to them.^{[4]
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Em's phone breaks when she's talking with her boyfriend Kevin. Byrkit explains that the entire anomaly starts at this moment, when Em's phone screen breaks.^{[5]
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Research source} The anomaly is related to a comet passing close to Earth that experts are warning could cause some weird phenomena.
- From her phone conversation, you're able to glean that there's some major decision looming and she is trying to put off making that decision. This hesitation is a character flaw that will continue to follow Em through the movie.
- There is also some tension in Em and Kevin's relationship, something else that will continue to follow her.
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Em's nemesis Laurie is introduced at the dinner party. Em has barely arrived at Mike and Lee's house for the dinner party when she's told that their friend Amir is bringing Laurie with him as his date. Laurie is Kevin's ex-girlfriend. Given that Em and Kevin's relationship seems to be on thin ice for some reason, Em is not at all pleased with this development. Em also gets bothered by Kevin's reaction when he finds out Laurie is coming. Later, she'll also get upset about how he acts around Laurie.
- Remember, this is Em's story. Laurie has been introduced to act as Em's nemesis. This is really her only point in the story.
- Later at the dinner table, there's some disconnect with Laurie about whether she does yoga, and again with Mike when she claims she was a huge fan of the show he starred in but never saw him in it. Byrkit explains that the whole point of this is to mess with the audience's perception of reality.^{[6]
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Em's main character flaw–being indecisive–is revealed. As the group chats around the dinner table, you learn that Em is a ballet dancer, apparently the second-best in the world—because her part was taken by the best dancer in the world. She was offered the role of understudy, but dithered for too long, unable to make up her mind, and the role was given to someone else.
- That someone else is now basically a household name because the best dancer dropped out before the first performance. Em knows that could have been her, if only she had been able to make a decision more quickly.
- This relates back to Em's inability to make a decision on this trip with Kevin as well. She likely feels as though this flaw is causing her to shoot herself in the foot again and again. She listens to others talk about changes they've made and things they're doing and wishes it could be that easy for her.
As they're going around the table sharing wild stories, Kevin chooses one from a night he was going out on a date with Laurie. Even though the story doesn't really involve Laurie to any extent, it upsets Em because she's still all up in her feelings about Laurie being there in the first place and Kevin is just not reacting to this situation the way she wants him to.
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Em notices that the handwriting on the pictures looks like hers. Hugh and Amir, who had previously gone to the other house, came back with a metal lockbox. Inside the box is a Ping Pong paddle and pictures of the 8 of them with numbers on the back that seem to be random. Em remarks to Kevin that the handwriting looks like hers. The group also puzzles over how these pictures could've gotten in the box, especially the one of Amir, which could only have been taken that evening.
- While the group doesn't know this at the time, the box is a marker for the house. Since they've taken it, it's now become the de facto marker for their house.
- Hugh and Amir left the house, went through the black space, and returned. Because of the random way the black space works, this is not the same Hugh and Amir that started in this house.
- While Em and Kevin are at the table alone talking about the pictures, Em mentions to Kevin how humiliating it was to her for him to tell that story. He brushes it off and dismisses her feelings.
- Kevin also explains to Em that he needed to tell a wild story and he didn't have any wild stories involving Em. This gives her something else to feel insecure about—the idea that maybe she's not wild enough for Kevin.
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Em, Kevin, Mike, and Laurie end up in a different reality together. Hugh and Amir have told them that their alter-selves are in this house, and everybody is pretty incredulous. Mike wants to go and see for himself, and gets Kevin to tag along. Em is completely against this until Laurie decides to go, at which point Em immediately says she's going too, because there's no way she's letting Kevin and Laurie have this experience together.^{[7]
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- When they set off, all 4 are from the Ping Pong House. Of those who stay behind, only Hugh and Amir are actually from a different reality, but everyone else is the original.
- When all 4 come back through the dark space, they end up in a different reality, because that's how the dark space works.
- Now, the 4 of them are in a house where Hugh and Amir took the box from the other house, but there was an oven mitt in the box.^{[8]
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Em asks Beth if she drugged their food. Beth had offered up a vial full of various natural remedies and a little ketamine. With all the weirdness, Em wonders if maybe Beth put ketamine in their food and they're just all tripping. It's pretty quickly proven that Beth didn't do this, and that even if she did, there wasn't enough ketamine missing to cause such a massive collective hallucination.
- Within the film, Byrkit explains that the ketamine operates partly as a sort of "Chekhov's gun" (it will ultimately become the weapon Em uses to get rid of the Em whose reality she wants) and partly as a red herring.^{[9]
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Em figures out they're not back at the Ping Pong House. Things are tense when the group returns, as no one can agree on what to do with the knowledge they think they have. Their bickering chills into a tense silence, when suddenly she overhears Beth and Lee engaging in a small-talk conversation identical to one she overheard shortly after arriving at the dinner party. This tells her that this isn't the same Beth, or the same Lee, that she started the night with.
- At the same time, Beth and Lee have never left the house—either in this house, or in the Ping Pong House—so whatever house they're in, they must be attached to. Therefore, Em must have switched to a different reality.
- Because she brought Kevin, Laurie, and Mike with her, they're all Ping Pong House people too (at least until Mike leaves to try and blackmail himself).
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Em confronts Kevin about Laurie. When they got back to the house, Kevin and Laurie had an intimate encounter in the hallway. They thought they were alone, but Beth overheard and told Em about it. Moments later, Em crosses paths with Kevin and asks him about it. He again dismisses her feelings and tells her she has nothing to worry about.
- Kevin tells Em he believes they have more important things to worry about than whether he's rekindling something with his ex. He doesn't understand why Em is so obsessed with this, while all she wants is for him to validate her feelings.
- Kevin's conversation with Laurie in the hallway reveals that Em's hesitancy causes a great deal of tension in her relationship with Kevin and that he's getting impatient with her.
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Em recognizes how the dark space works. Because they encounter another group on their trip, the 4 Ping Pong House people are now fully on board with the alternate-reality theory and understand the purpose of the box that Hugh and Amir grabbed from the other house—it was a marker. They group goes about creating a similar box for their house and as Em starts putting the random numbers on the backs of the photos, she realizes she's seen different sets of numbers.
- When Em asks everyone to tell her the number on the back of the first photo of themselves that they saw, they give different numbers than the first set she saw of everyone. That tells her that she's not in the Ping Pong house.
- Em does some testing on her own and figures out that Kevin and Laurie are from the Ping Pong house, but Mike is not. Mike switched out when he went to blackmail himself.
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Em tells Mike that they are visitors in this house. By this point, Mike is drinking heavily and seems to dismiss what Em is telling him, but he's actually internalizing it. Later, when Hugh confronts him about the blackmail thing, Mike realizes that because what Em was saying was true, Hugh's after the wrong Mike. He tries to explain and the two go at each other personally, leading Mike to the conclusion that all of the splitting started that night.
- Byrkit confirms that Mike was correct that the splitting started that night.^{[10]
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  Research source} Any significant choice anyone made after those phones broke would result in a split.
- Everything in these people's lives that happened before the moment the phones broke is the same for everyone. Any time after that, choices and experiences diverged, resulting in different realities.
- They also more or less agree that the comet is causing this anomaly that allows these different realities to interact with each other, and speculate that when the comet passes, the anomaly will end and they'll be stuck in whatever reality they happen to be in when the comet passes.
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Em leaves the house in a fit of jealous anger. Em knows she isn't in the Ping Pong House, and that the odds of her finding her way back to the Ping Pong House are astronomical, because she has no control over which reality she ends up in when she goes through the dark space. Since it would be all but impossible for her to find her way back to the Ping Pong House before the comet passes and the anomaly ends, she sets off in search of the reality where she is living what she believes is her best life, together with Kevin as a happy couple.^{[11]
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- The only people with Em who are her people, from the Ping Pong House, are Laurie and Kevin. Em is not interested in being a part of this love triangle anymore.
- Along the way, Em peeks into the windows of many houses, trying to find the one reality where she and Kevin are happy and she doesn't have to worry about Laurie. Byrkit mentioned these scenes were among the most fun to shoot because they got to imagine how the different realities would play out.^{[12]
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Em chooses to live in a reality where she’s a ballet dancer. For Em, the anomaly offers an opportunity for her to be bold for once and take what, in her mind, should have been hers all along. She finds a reality in which she chooses the understudy role and now has a starring role in the ballet and is a global superstar in the dance world. She's also chosen to travel to Vietnam with Kevin, and they are a happy couple.
- Byrkit confirms that in this reality, Em told Kevin that she would go to Vietnam with her, and her whole life went differently as a result.^{[13]
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- While Em doesn't know what will happen if her reality and this other Em's reality collapse on each other, she has decided that whatever it is, it's preferable to being stuck in a reality that's not her own with her boyfriend and his ex-girlfriend, who are being flirty with each other.
- Byrkit noted that his goal was for the audience to be wondering, at the end of the movie, if she had gotten away with it.^{[14]
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Section 2 of 7:

Who called Kevin in the final scene?

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Em calls Kevin, which leads him to realize that he's not with “his” Em. While this final reality does seem rather untouched by the craziness of all the switching and the alternate realities, that doesn't mean that they were entirely left alone. After all, Em got there, which means that it's likely other Ems could have done the same thing.
- Byrkit does confirm that the final reality Em decides on seems to have avoided all of the weirdness of the night. They don't seem to have had any power outages or realize that anything could possibly be amiss (and none of their phones are broken).^{[15]
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Section 3 of 7:

Themes in Coherence

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The consequences of indecision Em’s biggest regret is not accepting the role of understudy that would have made her a famous ballet dancer. Because she spent too much time debating that decision, the role was ultimately given to another dancer who subsequently became extremely famous. Em believes that if she'd accepted, she would be the famous dancer. Em's self-doubt causes her to struggle making even small decisions in the film.
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The impact of uncertainty and fear The characters’ perception of reality is thrown into utter turmoil because of the strange occurrences caused by the comet passing. Their relationships with one another quickly erode as they try to navigate their bizarre experiences. The fear and uncertainty the feel isolates them from one another and they're each left questioning their own sanity.
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The nature of free will The idea of individual choice and how each decision–no matter how small or seemingly insignificant–can affect or change the course of reality is a prevalent theme throughout the film. The reference to quantum mechanics further solidifies this idea since the science suggests every decision creates a new reality, or a parallel universe, where different versions of each character exists.

Section 4 of 7:

Scientific Theory in Coherence

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The science is a real concept, but the film details are inaccurate. Byrkit insists that there's no science in the movie—it's a work of fantasy. The plot does draw inspiration from scientific concepts which makes it feel like real science, but it’s not. The focus of the film is more about the psychological and emotional impact of the comet, not the comet itself. Despite the title of the film, Byrkit's intention was for the scientific elements to be something of a red herring—there's no actual science in this movie.^{[16]
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- Schrödinger's Cat (mentioned in the film) is a real phenomenon, but it doesn't actually have much to do with the alternative realities in Coherence. Schrödinger's Cat was meant as a response to the Copenhagen interpretation, in which Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg postulated that, essentially, there is no definitive reality until something is observed and measured.
- Quantum coherence and decoherence, likewise, are real things, but the characters don't actually understand the theory. So if you don't understand it, you're in good company! Luckily, it also doesn't really have anything to do with the anomaly. It's just a tangent the group goes off on. As Byrkit explains, while it's a legitimate theory, the phenomenon in this film is just not an illustration of it.^{[17]
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Section 5 of 7:

Em’s Journey of Self-Discovery in Coherence

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Em is on a hero's journey looking to change her life. The hero's journey, a story structure outlined by Joseph Campbell, takes the character through 3 basic stages: separation (or departure), initiation, and return. You can see these 3 stages in the journey Em takes through the film:^{[18]
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- Separation/departure: At the beginning of the film, Em's phone screen shatters, marking the beginning of the anomaly that will forever alter her perception of reality.
- Initiation: As a result of her experience with the anomaly, she is forced to confront some hard truths about herself and her relationship with Kevin.
- Return: In the final scenes of the film, Em chooses to take the reality in which she has made the choices she was afraid to make in this reality.
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Em is the only character who actively chooses another reality. While there are plenty of other characters who switch places or end up in different realities as a result of passing through the dark space, none of those switches are intentional. In fact, Em is the only character who chooses to pass through the dark space again, after everyone in the house with her understands and accepts the random nature of the dark space.
- Once she gets started, Em passes back and forth through the dark space over and over, peeking through the window at several different alternate realities until she finds the one she thinks will be most satisfying.
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Em learns that self-discovery also means having empathy for others. According to Byrkit, this is the heart of the movie, the ultimate theme—we're all the same, so there's no need for all of this conflict. All of the things that we fear about others are just our own fears about ourselves that we are projecting onto other people.^{[19]
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- Understanding what you might possibly do in a situation and why gives you the tools to understand what other people would do as well.
- When you can understand why people act the way they do, you don't have to be as fearful. Their actions become more predictable based on the surrounding circumstances.

Section 6 of 7:

The Making of Coherence

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The actors in Coherence improvise all of their dialogue. This helps the film feel more organic and also creates natural moments of awkwardness and disconnect in the dialogue. As Byrkit explains, it also connects to the theme of randomness, because anything an actor says could spin the scene off in a different direction.^{[20]
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- The improvised nature of the dialogue also means that scenes typically devolve into multiple conversations with several people talking over each other—as happens when you have a group of people together who are all trying to talk at the same time.
- As strange as it may seem in a movie that is mostly people talking, the dialogue is improvised because it doesn't actually matter what anyone says. What's important is what people do, not what they say. Keep that in mind if you find it confusing or contradictory or hard to follow.
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The director filmed Coherence in his own home. Coherence is a low-budget, independent film that was entirely shot in and around Byrkit's home. Doing this definitely controlled costs, but it was also a deliberate choice that contributed to the organic look and feel of the film.^{[21]
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Section 7 of 7:

Films similar to Coherence

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There are tons of sci-fi themed movies that question the nature of reality! Human beings love to ponder the fabric of reality and there’s no shortage of mind-bending films out there that will scratch a similar itch as Coherence. If you loved the unique blend of drama, horror, and science fiction in Coherence, you should also check out these films:
- Triangle
- Source Code
- Annihilation
- Primer
- 12 Monkeys
- The Invitation
- Time Crimes
- Inception
- The Man From Earth