One Of The Best Sci-Fi Thrillers You've Never Seen Will Totally Break Your Brain

The other night, I had a hankering to watch a good high-concept movie I'd never seen before. I saw 2014's "Coherence" on a few lists, and being almost wholly unfamiliar with it, I decided to fire it up and give it a shot. Thankfully, this film gave me exactly what I was looking for.

Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Elizabeth Gracen, Alex Manugian, Lauren Maher, Hugo Armstrong, and eventual "Hustlers" director Lorene Scafaria star in this ultra-low budget brain melter about a group of friends gathering for a dinner party while a comet passes by overhead. When the power goes out, a couple of them trek up the street to a neighboring house with the lights on — only to discover something that shakes them to their core. I won't get into the specifics here, but the film has an incredible conceit, and director James Ward Byrkit, who shot the movie over five nights at his own house, is able to milk huge amounts of tension and drama from the scenario he and Manugian cooked up here. 

Byrkit opted for a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" approach to shooting, largely letting the actors improvise their dialogue as long as they hit key plot points in order to achieve a more lived-in, realistic vibe. That technique could easily backfire, resulting in a movie that feels too shaggy for its own good. But the cast is up to the challenge, and the central conflict is so strong that the film never has room for useless tangents or "why'd they do that?" deviations. Once the narrative takes off like a rocket after only a few minutes of character work, it's time to grab hold and don't let go until the credits roll.