Last year was a great year for science fiction, reaffirming the genre’s place in the mainstream. As always, it’s refreshing to see ambitious sci-fi’s like Guardians of the Galaxy, Snowpiercer, and even the severely flawed Interstellar receive their fair share of love in year-end lists alongside typical non-genre prestige pics.
Amidst all this love for science fiction, one branch of the genre continues to go unrecognized and unfairly slighted by critics and audiences alike – a branch I’m calling “low-key science fictions,” for lack of a better term, an underserved sub-subgenre that grounds its genre noodling firmly in a mundane world. There are more examples than most might think, but in relation to last year, I’m thinking primarily of The One I Love and Coherence.
Coherence revolves around a dinner party and the uncomfortable romantic dynamics between a few of the friends that are interrupted and eventually worsened by a comet passing overhead causing unexpected space-time ramifications. The One I Love explores a failing marriage, following the couple on a romantic getaway that quickly sours when they meet seemingly perfect doppelgängers of themselves.
In film, science-fiction is so often an escapist genre, whisking entranced viewers to fantastical worlds so far removed from reality. For all its heartstring-tugging and terror-mongering villains, Guardians of the Galaxy is mostly an invitation to jet set around a colorful cosmic world with wisecracking antiheroes. Even a dystopian sci-fi like The Matrix allows viewers to indulge in messianic fantasies of higher purpose by putting themselves in Neo’s place. Snowpiercer is a gloomier take on the genre than most, but the post-apocalyptic setting still allows viewers to distance themselves.
By first establishing a mundane world and then injecting the fantastical element, these films similarly [to Hitchcock] make scenarios that might otherwise feel hackneyed, seem direct.
Coherence and The One I Love allow no such distance—they’re confrontational, allowing viewers to see shades of their world and their relationships before catapulting characters into otherworldly situations. One of Hitchcock’s greatest assets as a storyteller was his ability to inject tension and anxiety into the mundane, proving that any suburban home can be equally as scary as the bleakest of haunted mansions. By first establishing a mundane world and then injecting the fantastical element, these films similarly make scenarios that might otherwise feel hackneyed, seem direct. In an everyday world we inherently understand, we better realize the way such insane goings-on really affect the characters and their relationships.
Like The Twilight Zone – an influence plainly acknowledged through dialogue in The One I Love – both films mix realism with mind-bending scenarios to provoke thought, asking viewers, in no uncertain terms, what would you do? Watching both, I started looking for excuses to distance myself from the characters and their questionable moralities.
Neither film, however, is perfect. Both have some trouble establishing a distinct visual language like sci-fi’s with larger budgets might, and The One I Love in particular occasionally sacrifices the integrity of its characters in service of the story—Elisabeth Moss’s Sophie, for example, embraces the surreal situation far too easily to be plausible. While Coherence roots itself in the more fantastic elements of quantum sciences, The One I Love doesn’t bother trying to ground its insanity in science, which is fine, but it sometimes falters in trying to explain how the world it implies exactly works.
Despite their flaws, both films deserved to be seen and generally, they weren’t. Who even heard of Coherence and The One I Love during their limited theatrical runs? Although Under the Skin and Her stand out as notable exceptions, most films within this sub-subgenre go unrecognized in theaters and at awards shows when they’re first released. Studios might not have faith in their discomforting appeals, but these films tend to find their audiences one way or another, as evidenced by the burgeoning cult status for films like Primer. In this humble reviewer’s opinion, it’s high time we see more smart low key science fiction features in more theaters.
Admittedly, there’s always a risk in wishing for more of a certain something in film, but I don’t believe there’s much chance of megaplexes becoming anywhere near as saturated with low-key sci-fi’s as they often are with, say, superhero flicks (unless Coherence is rebooted as The Amazing Coherence maybe). In the unlikely event this sub-subgenre even gains the popularity I fancy it deserves, such films should have a longer shelf life than most.
There is, after all, a reason The Twilight Zone endured for so many seasons and continues to resonate with channel surfers decades later. Although most episodes work well within the thirty-minute format, films like The One I Love and Coherence prove that similar stories are well-suited feature length. If they get the chance, they might just resonate decades on like the best episodes of The Twilight Zone do. Given the chance and the viewership, I think films mining the same vein with the same confidence and intelligence could resonate just as long.
