Oscilloscope Laboratories
has tabbed Jan. 20 as the DVD release date for writer/director James Ward
Byrkit’s multi-award-winning claustrophobic creep-out, Coherence.
The ARR is 214 days and
ticket sales came to $102,617.
A half-dozen friends are
over for dinner at Mike (Nicholas Brendon — as Kevin Lynch in the Criminal
Minds television series and as Xander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
series) and Lee’s house (Lorene Scafaria), which could have been a horror story
all unto itself since the relationships between the assembled guests are so
tangled and twisted that more than a few verbal punches are anticipated.
With this tension
established, the fun begins when, of all things, a passing comet begins to
interact with the electronics … we are, after all, a society dependent on our
little devices.
This of course leads to
a combination of speculation and folk tales about what was rumored to have
happened when this particular comet zipped by last time. It’s very clever, instead of campers sitting
around a camp fire in the woods telling ghost stories, they are gathered around
the dinning room table sipping wine and doing the exact same thing.
Strange things then begin
to happen, the phones are out, the lights flicker, phones explode, strange
noises rattle the proceedings (literally bumps in the night) and an unsettled
feeling of “what next” begins to grip the group. They check on the neighbors, that only makes
it worse.
The tension builds and
filmmaker Byrkit uses the confines of the house (which becomes metaphorically
smaller as the evening progresses) and combines this with the Val Lewton
principle of horror filmmaking, where the unseen and unknown — working on the
mind — can be more terrifying than any visible threat.
Bonus features for the
DVD release of Coherence include commentary from filmmaker James Ward Byrkit,
who is joined by actors Alex Manugian (who co-wrote the script) and Emily
Foxler, plus there are a behind-the-scenes featurette and test footage with
comments by Byrkit.
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