8 Great Films Made On A Shoestring Budget

Coherence (2013) is the kind of innovative sci-fi thriller that comes around once in a blue moon. Made on a tight budget of $50,000, the film a group of friends who begin to experience as series of bizarre, surreal events in their neighbourhood after a comet passes overhead. Encountering an alternate reality with carbon copies of themselves, the group goes on an increasingly odd journey to figure out what's going on.

Director James Ward Byrkit made the film without a crew or a script, just a basic idea of what he wanted from the story. The dialogue, all improvised, carries with it added tension because it was all so natural and realistic, and the setting, filmed in one room, was used to make the film feel at once claustrophobic and eerie.

All of this ended up paying off, as Coherence makes for a spooky, plot-twisting thrill-ride that balances its themes of paranoia and uncertainty beautifully with the film's science-fiction roots.