Coherence(2013)

Decided to do a double feature with this after watching The End of Oak Street.

I watched this film over the pandemic and it has stayed with me since then. I have wanted to rewatch rewatch this for a very long time but have always been too scared. But I watched this in a remote watch party where we each watched it at home and texted through the movie our reactions. It's actually not a bad format to enjoy a movie with your friends in, but I think it needs the movie to be quite good to really work, and this really is a great film! Sometimes films i liked during that pandemic turn out to be really bad when I rewatch them but rewatching has affirmed its quality for me and I highly recommend.

The ultra-low budget of the film did not dull its genius. Everything I've learned about the making of this film makes me respect creator and cast more and more. The fact that was no written script is insane. The tension rises steadily throughout the story. Based on the Freudian theory about the primal fear of "the double," the story gets darker and darker. The scene where Emily and Kevin realize they are not each other's Emily and Kevin after hugging in the darkness haunts me to this day. There was some over-reliance on music to build suspense, but when the film had to work on this low of a budget, that is nothing to complain about.

There are many useful social lessons to be taken from this film. Don't sleep with your friend's wife and still go to a dinner party with them. Don't leave written evidence of things you do not want people to know about you. Don't be friends with people who are murderous alcoholics. The first time I watched this and it really freaked me out, I comforted myself by saying that if you trust your alternate self, then you have nothing to be afraid of. Rewatching has made me realize that the horrifying implications of a decoherence situation is actually much darker. Yes, I trust myself now with another carbon copy of me, but do I really trust a version of me for whom life really went wrong in every critical juncture? I really don't know and it's a terrifying thing just to contemplate.