Coherence (2013) Ending Explained

Coherence (2013) is an American surreal science fiction psychological thriller film directed by James Ward Byrkit. It stars Emily Foxler as a lead.

Coherence (2013) Ending Explained and Plot Story in Details

* * * Spoiler Alert – If you haven’t seen the movie yet, turn back now! * * *

Emily is talking with Kevin over the phone; Kevin says he was in a lawyer’s bar. Suddenly Em doesn’t get any sound from the other side, and her phone gets cracked by itself. Eight friends reunite in North California in the house of the spouse Mike and Lee. Beth has been having cleansing for 21 days. Cleansing means not having unhealthy foods like carbs, junk foods, drinks, or drugs. Em comes and says hello to everyone and tells them whatever happened to her. Kevin was talking about Miller’s Comet, and suddenly, the phone cracked.

They assume maybe she dropped it. She says I was holding my phone, and suddenly it’s cracked. Beth asks if anyone knows that Laurie is coming. Em says she didn’t know. Then Kevin and Hugh enter and say hi to everyone.

Kevin and Em are talking about booking some hotel or something. Em isn’t sure yet about that. At that time, Laurie and Amir come. After Laurie comes, Kevin is totally changed; he opens up his scarf and tries to be a nice gentleman. They all sit for dinner, and Hugh asks if the network is still down. One of them says, maybe the tower is down. Em says not a tower thing; it’s a big news story. In Finland in 1923, a comet passing incident happened, named Miller’s Comet. It was actually crazy because when it happened, it affected people. After it passed, they would get lost. They would end up in the wrong home; they would forget things.

They wouldn’t really know where they were. She remembers reading about this one woman who called the police and said that the man in her house was not her husband. And then the police came over, saying that this was her husband. She said negatively that this was not her husband because she had killed her husband the previous day. But the police couldn’t arrest her because he was before them. Then Lee tells about something Hailey’s comet. Beth says there is a secret door in Lee’s house. You put a picture of someone, and then it will give you some weird energy flow. Hugh asks when the last time we were all together was before Thanksgiving. Most of them were there.

Laurie asks Mike what does he do recently. He says he is helping his wife’s skyping career. But he is an actor, actually. He was on the show Roswell. But Laurie can’t recognize him even if it was her favorite show. She says actors on tv and actors face to-face is different. She asks Em. Em says she had a dance group, and she created it, but right before the premiere, they brought in Svetlana Aserrano. She is the best in the world. So Em got replaced. Laurie is such an uncivilized girl that she doesn’t even know how to react when people say their sad stories. She says you hear these things that people are being shut out of something they created. It’s terrible.

Then Emily says that’s not the case; I needed to hold on to the understudying. Because the girl who got the desired part was a dancer way worse than Em. Then everyone was telling a different story. Kevin starts telling a story in such a way that somebody is gonna die. They all laugh about it. Then Hugh notices his phone screen is shattered like Em. No one’s phone has a network. But no one understands anything because their phone is in another room. Hugh suggests checking the computer. Amir goes to the other room. He returns and says there is no internet. Mike can’t believe it. He asks how there could be no internet. Hugh needs to make a call to his brother because he said that if the comet passes and you see anything weird happen, then he requested to make a call to him.

Beth asks why you didn’t tell me. Hugh says because he didn’t want to freak them out. Then suddenly, the lights go out. The electricity is gone. They go out to enjoy the load-shedding. Then they observe the beauty of the comet passing. One thing that Mike notice is weird, which is everything is dark outside except one house. Everyone thinks maybe they have a generator. They feel hopeful to see another lightened house. Hugh needs to make a call, so he decides to go to the house if they have phones. He goes with Amir avoiding his wife’s inhibition.

Everyone else is waiting for them, ten minutes passes but they don’t come. Suddenly they hear a bang outside the door. After checking, they find no one outside. After a while, Hugh and Amir return. Hugh is a little bit wounded in the head, and Amir is with a box. Mike open the box. Everyone’s picture is in the box. Every photo holds a number behind it. They need help understanding what that means. Hugh says he goes there and sees eight people sitting in a chair, and they look exactly like them. But Hugh asks Amir why he took that box. Hugh decides to go there again and will ask them for help. Everyone denies it, but he decides to do it. Hugh makes a note, writing,

‘Hey…is anyone here?…I need to make a call…

At that moment, someone bangs at the door. Kevin goes and says, ‘Oh my god… he is really big guy’. Kevin opens the door and gets a note. Seeing the note, everyone falls from the sky. That note looks exactly like Hugh’s note. Beth is aiding Hugh. Everyone else is examining the numbers of the pictures. They are thinking, who can do this? Amir suddenly notices the picture of him was taken tonight because he bought the sweater tonight. Laurie is wondering if any one of them is doing this purposely.

Em notices the number written behind the pictures, which is written by her. This is her handwriting. Kevin and Em don’t understand anything. Em says they have so many memories together, but at the table, he shared a memory with Laurie. Em says she is not enough for him. Kevin tries to make her understand.

On the other hand, they decide to go outside and see themselves with their own eyes. Em, Mike, Kevin, and Laurie go outside. They walk along the road towards the house. Mike says this is his house. He goes near the house, but everyone else says it’s not his house; they pull him towards them and walk to their house. On the way back, they see four people exactly looking like them. They run to their home and tell everyone else what happened. Beth says Brian left a book in the back of the car. Hugh brings it. There is written something about quantum physics. That physics is saying they should not contact the other group of people. If they do that, it will be harmful to them.

Em says, but they gave them the box. They kept the pictures for us. Amir says that box is not meant for us. We invade their territory. Quantum physics says decoherence keeps us separate. One of them says we have already broken the rule of decoherence. They will collapse on us at any moment. Before that, I am gonna collapse on them. Mike says he will go over there and kill them. Kevin tells Mike that if he does that, he will kill himself. They ask If he goes there what he is gonna see. But Mike says he saw different four.

They were different four. They were Hugh, Lee, and Amir. If, in this reality, Lee is napping. Maybe in that reality, Beth is napping. So in that reality, they are not having this conversation. So they don’t have the book. We can prevent the collapse if we take the book from their car, but Hugh doesn’t want to give the keys. Mike gets pissed off. He makes a plan. He is gonna go there and blackmail Mike with a secret he doesn’t want to reveal. Kevin says it’s the worst idea.

Lee gets up from a nap and says, after taking the drink. She felt a little sleepy. Then Em asks Beth if she put the drug in everyone’s food. Everyone gets persuaded by the thought that Beth has done it. But Beth says a person has to drink a whole bottle if anyone wants to be paranoid. I have only put a few drops because she asked for them. In the meantime, the other Hugh and Amir have taken all the photos and boxes to return them. Mike comes into the house, and Kevin asks him where he went. He said to blackmail him, and I dropped the letter, but it freaked me out. Kevin says he has gone for 5 minutes, but Mike says he was gone for 45 minutes. Kevin doesn’t believe that.

Mike starts to drink, and everyone comes down and sees the box, and the book is not there. They want to bring the book, and they return the box, but now they take everything. That means they were different from the person who left. They are different. After that, Kevin and Laurie talk in the hallway, and they kiss at some point. Beth sees that and tells it to Em. Em asks Kevin, and he ignores her. Suddenly they hear a sound and get outside to see what is happening. They see the car’s glass is broken. Em finds a ring in the car, and it is given by Kevin. She wants to keep it on her finger. She asks Kevin if everything is okay. Kavin says everything is okay, and they hug each other. But after some time, she realized it was not real, Kevin.

Mike brings Em some pictures to cut them off; therefore, they are fake, too, not the real ones. Beth injects some Ketamine into the drink of Lee. Beth is fake, too, but everyone is acting like they are the real ones. After some time, Amir and Hugh return. Everyone thinks they are the real one and hug them. They are finally all together. But they show the previous reason to go outside. When they were first outside. Everyone thinks everything is okay now. The problem is finally solved. But Mike creates a problem. Mike asks how we are sure they are real.

Mike then reveals the truth that he slept with his wife. Hugh says his wife never slept with his best friend. But in real life, Mike slept with his best friend. Hugh attacks him. Between these problems, Em gets outside of the house. She knows the real Kevin doesn’t love her anymore. So she needs to find her lover Kevin who she has got to meet outside the car. She looks at every house. There is happening different story in every different house. She eventually finds that house kills Em, and takes the place of that Em.

What happened in the story of Coherence (2013)?

The comet reaction is portrayed in the movie. The Miller’s Comet is so close to our earth right now. So it affects the people. It makes people see people exactly looking like them. So everyone is experiencing confusing incidents. No one recognizes recognizing anyone. It’s not a time loop. It’s a whole bunch of different stories of the same group of people.

What is the Decoherence theory?

Decoherence theory is an idea in quantum physics that explains why tiny particles can act in strange ways but larger things, like everyday objects, behave normally. When small particles interact with their surroundings, they lose their weird behavior and start following the usual rules we see in our everyday world. This mathematical quantum theory helps us understand why quantum effects are usually invisible in our daily lives and is essential for developing technologies like quantum computers.

Suppose a cat is in a box. It has a fifty-fifty chance of living. Because there is a vial of poison that is also in the box. So, regular Physics would say that it is one or the other. The cat is either alive or dead. But Brian would argue that quantum physics says that both realities exist simultaneously. It is only when you open the box that they collapse into a single event. Quantum decoherence ensures that the different outcomes have no interaction with each other.

In the movie Coherence (2013), decoherence is portrayed as a science fiction concept linked to a passing comet’s unique radiation. This radiation causes multiple parallel realities to overlap, leading to the coexistence of different versions of the characters from alternate timelines. As they interact with their alternate selves and face reality-twisting experiences, the boundaries between these parallel realities become increasingly blurred. Although the film takes creative liberties, it loosely draws inspiration from the real-world scientific concept of decoherence in quantum mechanics, where a quantum system loses its coherence when interacting with its environment. “Coherence” offers a mind-bending narrative that explores these ideas in a fictional setting.

What was the story of Kevin at the table?

Kevin and Laurie went out for drinking. They were drinking way too much of a bar. He passed out and started dreaming. This big black bear was up for its hind legs, sort of mauling him. Slowly. Tenderly. Anyhow they go to some party in Santa Cruz, and as they walk in, this huge dog comes running at him. He jumps up on its hind legs and starts pawing him exactly like a dream. And this guy yelled, ‘Bear, get down, Bear.’

Whatever happens, in the world, that can be passing a comet, collapsing the hills even destroying the whole world, people want to be loved by their loved ones.