Coherence: First Time Reaction

Wow, that's really interesting! It definitely felt more 'real' in terms of dialogue and character interactions, so the improv makes total sense. Reminded me more of a play than a scripted movie. And yeah, the way this movie explores the Multiverse idea is really cool. 'What could have been?' and whatnot. My mind automatically went to a place of some malevolent force is doing this, but it ends up being a (natural?) phenomenon, and it's the people involved that turn it into something dark and violent. Very interesting character study.

One of my favorite little indie movies. I think what I like about this one is that maybe because it was made a bit before the multiverse went all mainstream I think of it as kind of a different take on things. There are definitely multiple ways you could kind of take the concept: the more sort action adventure style of MCU where the multiverse is really just there for wackiness (which along with just the MCU in general now I'm kind of over I think), the focus on different life paths from something like Everything Everywhere All at Once and such in a more positive sense. I think with this one it really is about regrets and dysfunction. The group definitely could have been better suited for this (stayed inside and not interacted) if they were in a better spot mentally. But what we get here is kind of a grab bag of neuroses and insecurities and just things that are a bit off. Not like, serial killer stuff so much but just they're all kind of messed up in a realistic way that comes to a head with the events of the film. Like, the group was probably a bit over the top about their criticism of Laurie in the beginning because they're a bit dysfunctional, but also Laurie definitely had her bad points at the same time. In the same way this is really what kind of drives the main character Em to do what she does in the end: she's thinking about how her life was "stolen" by Katherine Meriss and now she's doing it to be the "her" that she thought she deserved, in a sort of mental breakdown. The bit about Mike and Roswell was a fun little reference I think to the actor being one of the main cast for the TV show Buffy btw, if you didn't know that. It's also something that could be taken as you guys did where maybe the details of the night were already getting kind of fuzzy/alternate. It could *also* be taken, as someone else I watched thought, that Laurie was deliberately just fucking with him because he misremembered her. The comment you made at the end about the script touches on something that was probably the most interesting part of the movie (even with all that's in there in the text), which is that there wasn't really a script for them to read! When making this film the filmmakers basically looked around and wanted to make a sort of low budget thing with relatively little cost and overhead for sets, etc. They came up with the different universes concept and overall plot idea after this, and grabbed a bunch of actor friends they knew were specifically good at improv. Then they would sit them down, give them an overall outline of the character and their motivations *for each scene* and say, "alright go" and film that with the cameras they had. Of course they had to do a bit of directing in terms of getting the characters to go to certain goals but the actors were just about as much in the dark as the audience for the filming of the movie and all the lines were improvisation to fit with the character they had in the moment and reacting to things as they happened. It's totally wild, and I've never heard of a movie that was essentially done in such a murder mystery or I guess role playing game type way. Even after filming, I think the actors mentioned they didn't know what it all looked like until they saw the final product and realized that was what they had been making the whole time. Totally bonkers, and it says something about how good they were all at their jobs that they made something so, well, coherent. You can get the sense of this I think with how their conversations flow in the film, with people talking into other people's lines, having side conversations, and just really "feeling" like real things people would say in how some things aren't perfect for the scene but are close enough (which makes it better in some ways for me).

Kelvin