The Full Synopsis

The film opens with Emily driving and on a phone call with Kevin, while on her way to Lee and Mike’s party. The phone signal is bad. Kevin says he is just getting off the freeway and Hugh picked him up at the office. Hugh was coming in from Oakland. This means Kevin has no car. He then says “I took him - corrects himself to “he took me”- to some lawyer bar.” They joke about ties. He then starts “we tried to take the freeway, and--” and is cut off by static. They make some more small talk and then Kevin says “maybe we should talk about that little problem before we get into the party.” Emily says ok, asks if “it’s something we should talk about now?” then phone screen somehow shatters and call drops.

Cut to inside house, Beth, Lee, and Mike are cooking. They talk about Beth’s cleanse, “on it about 21 days” then Emily walks in and mentions her cracked phone fiasco, shows it to the trio, and then says it could be because of Miller’s Comet passing, which has been all over the news. Lee doesn’t think it is the comet. Mike offers wine.

Cut to another kitchen scene, Beth, Lee, Mike, and Emily discuss their dislike for Laurie, Amir’s friend. They describe her as “kind of vixeny, wild and sexy, kinda strange, very mysterious.” Emily insists its fine, she seems bothered, and Beth then pulls out a vial, calling it her “own little rescue remedy concoction. It’s very safe, I think. Drop it into water to take the edge off.” She says it includes “echinacea, passion flower, a little valerian… and ketamine.” Mike states “that’s a horse tranquilizer,” to which Beth responds “it’s just a whisper of ketamine.”She offers it to everyone and then places it on the shelf above the sink. Beth then admires a plant in a skinny green vase and asks Lee where it is from. Lee responds “The galaxy thrift store.” The doorbell rings, and Hugh and Kevin walk in. Hugh is Beth’s husband. Everyone hugs. Mike jokingly offers “Wine, cheese, ketamine?”

Cut to another kitchen scene, everyone is talking and Emily asks the newcomers if they knew Laurie was coming. Kevin asks “Laurie’s coming?” with a smile and Emily points it out. Hugh asks why she’s coming and Kevin says “beats me, because Amir is a total Jackass.” Emily asks who was informed and Lee says she was emailed by Amir about his “plus one.”

Cut to just Emily and Kevin speaking, off from the group. Emily is drinking. He tells her she needs to decide tonight whether she is coming on the trip with him. He asks her to consider staying “one month, instead of the whole four” but she refuses to commit. She says “I’m not saying no and Kevin says “Babe, if you don’t say yes, it becomes a no.” Amir and Laurie then walk in and hug everyone. Beth seems uncomfortable. Kevin and Laurie speak for a moment to catch up while others discuss getting wine. They seem to know each other well.

Cut to dinner. Everyone is talking and then Hugh asks if anyone has cell service. No one does, and they theorize that the cell tower may be down, but Emily insists it must be the comet. Amir identifies it as Miller’s Comet. Hugh then mentions that he read something that morning about a comet in Finland in the 1930’s. Emily corrects that it was 1923, and explains that it affected the people it crossed over. “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 mentions one woman who called the police to say the man in her house wasn’t actually her husband. The police arrived, told her he was the man in question, and she said ‘no, it couldn’t be, I killed my husband yesterday. That’s how I know it’s not him.’ This is a fictional occurrence used to set the stage for Miller’s Comet’s effects and Emily’s understanding of them. The group brushes this story off as a joke. Lee mentions Halley’s Comet and how she and her school had to reenact the comet. Each child was given a role and Lee says he sister was the comet and she was jealous. Mike then says “I’ve never met her sister. Have you guys met her sister?” and we see Emily look confused. Lee points out a picture of her sister reenacting the comet on the other side of the room. Again, Mike asks “That’s your sister?” Beth asks why she put the picture next to The Door To Nowhere. She explains: “In feng shui, you put a picture of someone you have unresolved issues with next to a useless door and it causes all of this weird energy flow. Like a vortex.” This is possibly grounded in truth, but is used as a way to let the audience know TDTN is important and possibly unsafe.

Cut again. Still dinner. Hugh asks “When was the last time we were all together like this?” Mike states its was last Thanksgiving, when “most of us were there.” Mike gets Laurie’s name wrong (Laura) which upsets Lee, and asks Laurie what she’s been up to. Laurie explains she works with at-risk youth in Silicon Valley. Mike gets confused and asks if she is “still teaching spanish yoga” and Laurie, looking bewildered, says he has confused her with someone else. During this conversation, Mike distastefully reveals that Kevin and Laurie dated in the past, upsetting multiple people. To change topic, Laurie asks Mike what he does. Mike is an actor, and Laurie offends him by not realizing he acted, or recognizing him from a show she loves. He states he was on “Roswell” and she claims to love the show, but misremembers him being a main character. Mike and Laurie have now both directly “misremembered” facts about each other. (Note: Roswell premiered on The WB Network in 1999. Nicholas Brendan (Mike) was actually a main character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which premiered on the same WB Network in 1997. I believe this is a fourth-wall nod to the fact that the dinner party is not taking place in the same universe as the audience to begin with. Laurie asks Emily what she’s been up to, and Emily says that her dance show was going well but she was replaced (by Svetlana Aserrano, a fictional dancer) before it premiered. Emily states she was offered the understudy. Laurie says it’s awful to shut out of things you created, which Kevin reacts to by looking at her, as if she was referencing him. Emily continues, explaining that she made a big mistake by turning down an understudy job for pride because the woman (Katherine Meriss) who replaced her went on to do the lead role because of a drop-out just like Kevin’s comment about her decision about traveling. Laurie offends Emily by saying Meriss “stole her life.” Hugh breaks the tension with a toast. Mike toasts to the comet, which others join in on, then asks Kevin to tell a story. He decides to tell a story about him and Laurie drunk on a date at a bar. He fell asleep and dreamt of a gentle bear attack, then met a dog named bear later that night. No one finds the story that interesting, but Emily is bothered. Hugh then pulls out his phone and the group sees it’s completely shattered, just like Emily’s. Hugh asks for a landline to contact his brother. The house doesn’t have one, so they go to use the computer and discover there is no internet. Hugh mentions his brother Brian and how he “hangs around with theoretical physicists.” Mike reports there is no internet. They begin talking about what the comet could be doing, because Hugh’s brother had requested he contact him if “anything weird” started going on. Mike mentions Roswell again. The power then goes out. Mike pulls out three sealed boxes of glowsticks, saying there is a choice of red, green, or blue. He cuts open the blue box and cracks a blue one, as do the rest of the group, then heads outside with Hugh to check if anyone else on the street has power. (Hugh and Mike have now left the house once.) No one does, except for a house about 2 blocks up, which is completely lit up. The group heads out together, struggling in the pitch dark, and sees the house. They then all look up, see the comet, and decide to head inside. (We are now in a different house, House 2, this is illustrated by the broken glass.) Inside they discover a broken glass no one remembers breaking (and Mike says “I didn’t even know that was out here.”) but Beth changes the subject back to the house, she is very bothered by it. Hugh wants to go to the house, which no one thinks is a good idea, and says that his brother said if anything strange happens while the comet was passing, to stay inside and try to contact him. Beth is upset, so Hugh agrees to take Amir. Mike jokes that they should take glow sticks so the group can “identify their bodies.” Hugh and Amir leave the house and take their blue glow sticks with them. Laurie asks Emily what happened last time Miller’s Comet passed. Emily says it passed over 100 years ago, but much farther from earth, so it had no impact. She then tells the story of the Tunguska Event, in which a comet entered the atmosphere in Syberia and exploded just above earth’s surface. There was no crater, but hundreds of miles of trees were flattened. While discussing the date of the event, sudden loud knocking startles the group. It is coming from The Door To Nowhere. Lee grabs a baseball bat for Kevin and he begins walking towards the door, against the group’s protests. He looks outside and sees nothing. Mike goes to check the generator. Beth realises Hugh and Amir have been gone for too long and suggests they go look for them. Emily insists from now on they need to stay together. While they talk, the lights come back on thanks to the generator. They look outside but they are still the only house with power besides the aforementioned one. Beth is still anxious and again suggests they go look for her husband. Laurie says they should stay home, and Beth agrees. Out of seemingly nowhere, Laurie accuses Beth of giving her crap all night and Beth begins to argue back before the group calms them. The doorbell then rings, making the group jump. Kevin checks behind the curtain, then lets in Hugh and Amir. This is not the same Hugh and Amir that left, unbeknownst to the group. They are from a red glow sticks house. Hugh is lightly bleeding from his right eyebrow. Amir then sets down a metal lockbox. Emily asks what it is, and he says it was at the other house. Amir states he “thought he saw (Hugh) put it down, then he was running around the corner and … I just followed him.” Emily asks why Hugh was running, and gets no answer. Hugh walks in and they interrogate him about what happened. Hugh angrily asks Amir why he took the box. They argue a bit and Emily asks them to explain what happened. Amir says “We were at the other house. Hugh went around the side. I thought I heard a noise. (Hugh) made some kind of sound, and then you saw what?” The group then collectively pushes Hugh to reveal what he saw, which he insists is irrelevant. Mike then picks up the box to attempt to open it. He sits at the table. (This bit is tricky because we see Mike set the box down and take a purple key out of his pocket, then unlock the box with it. The camera pans away and when it pans back, Mike is removing a paperclip from the lock as if he picked it. This is notable because while it could be a continuity error, we know the purple key is already in Mike’s house somewhere. Did this Mike already have the key on him? Why wouldn’t he mention his key opens this strange box?) Hugh is visibly upset. Mike successfully gets it open, and inside they find one ping-pong paddle, and an envelope. Laurie opens it and discovers a picture of each member of the group. Each picture is numbered. At this point, the group insists they need to know what Hugh saw. He says “I went to the window… and I saw a table… with wine glasses and candles and dinner set for eight people. I saw…“ and he gestures to their dinner spread. Mike brushes it off as a joke. Kevin then asks if they were the ones to knock on The Door To Nowhere earlier, to which Hugh responds no. Amir adds that they went around to the side door at “the other house”, though. Some of the group then begin to assume that Hugh and Amir accidentally walked in a circle and ended up at the house they left. Hugh and Kevin argue, Laurie points out that this still doesn’t explain the pictures. While she examines them, Hugh says he’s going to go back to the other house to ask to use their phone, and if they aren’t there he’ll just leave a note. He sits down at the table to write said note, which reads “Hey there! Don’t mean to freak you guys out, but we just wanted to borrow your phone for five minutes tops. Thanks.” Meanwhile Laurie notices someone outside. Amir looks and sees “a big guy at the door.” The group freaks out and Kevin grabs the baseball bat. The mysterious man (an alternate Hugh) leaves, and Kevin opens the front door to grab a note left behind. He begins to read it, and Hugh looks down to see it is the exact same note he just finished writing.

Cut to Lee and Beth tending to Hugh’s wound. He chooses a cloth bandage, as opposed to a plastic one, and Lee applies it to his eyebrow. Meanwhile, the rest of the group is investigating the strange numbered pictures. The numbers seemingly have no system (1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6) and they discover Emily and Kevin’s pictures are one that has been cut in half. They begin to theorize what the numbers could mean (Beth incorrectly suggests numerology) and Emily writes it out with a red marker.

Red Box

While looking at his own picture, Amir realizes the photo must have been taken that night because of the freshly-bought sweater he is wearing. They figure out where it was taken in the room, and that it was taken from the direction of The Door To Nowhere while Amir looked directly into the lense. The group is thoroughly confused and worried, and they go to the kitchen for wine. Emily and Kevin stay behind, and notice the handwriting on the pictures matches Emily’s exactly, as if she numbered them. Randomly, Emily mentions she is upset that Kevin decided to tell a story and him and Laurie earlier that night, which causes a small argument. Armed with glasses of red wine, the group comes back into the dining room and Kevin announces he is going to go back to the other house and “theoretically see if our theoretical selves are there.” Emily objects to splitting up again, but the majority of the group wants answers. Amir says “no we’re not splitting up, we’re just going in two seperate groups.” The group then splits up, with Kevin, Laurie, Mike, and Emily leaving to investigate while Amir, Hugh, Beth, and Lee stay behind. They agree to be back in 20 minutes. Outside, the group discovers a complete absence of life. There is no cars or people anywhere. They begin to walk towards the other house and see that it is indeed the same house they left. Mike approaches House 3 and sees Lee inside. They notice someone coming and run away. On their way back to House 2, they come face to face with themselves… holding red glow sticks. There is a short stare down and then the group run away from each other.

Cut to the dining room, where the group that stayed behind is told what happened. This is not House 2. Beth says it’s nuts. They state the group was exactly the same as them, except they must have opened the red glow sticks after the power went out. Emily also mentions they had to pass through a “weird zone that’s even darker than the rest of it all,” and Hugh confirms he and Amir also passed through it. The group argues a bit while Hugh and Amir whisper in the corner (we later find out it is about the fact that they are in a blue glow stick house instead of a red one, like they should be. Truthfully, at this point the only people to stay together are Lee and Beth. [They are no longer Emily’s correct Lee and Beth, but they belong to the same reality.] Everyone else has shifted realities, some more than once.) Beth mentioned Hugh’s brother left a book at their house and it ended up in Hugh’s car, so Hugh and Kevin leave to retrieve it. The book is titled “Gravitation: An Introduction to Current Research.” (A real book by Louis Witten and discusses quantum superposition in relation to gravity.) Inside are notes from Hugh’s brother for a lesson plan called “Decoherence and Scroödinger’s Cat.” Hugh then explains the famous thought experiment, and that his brother was on the side that argued both realities exist simultaneously until the box is opened, which causes the realties to collapse into one. Hugh then reads directly from the lesson plan; “There is another theory: that two states continue to exist separate and decoherent from each other, each creating a new branch of reality based on the two outcomes. Quantum Decoherence ensures that the different outcomes have no interaction with each other.” Mike then suggests that they may be the cat, and the two realities will continue to exist until the comet passes. Amir argues that decoherence might be maintained, and the two realities could remain separate from one another forever. Hugh states “Decoherence keeps us separate.” Emily wonders why the red group chooses to contact them instead of maintaining decoherence. Amir argues the box was never meant for them to obtain. Mike theorizes that they have already had contact with the red group, so their reality could be collapsing as they speak, and he “half-kidding” suggests going over there to kill them. Laurie mentions the movie Sliding Doors, which is a real movie from 1998 about alternate timelines. Hugh says they should return the box, which Mike strongly disagrees with. Amir warns the group to be cautious and avoid conflict, that they might literally be up against themselves. Mike argues that if he wants to kill the red glowstick group, the red Mike must want to kill them, and he recognizes that could be very dangerous on account of his barely-controlled alcoholism. He then lists the people he saw at House 3 as Amir, Hugh, and Lee. Kevin reminds him that Lee is currently napping, so that is a difference between the two houses. He goes on to theorize that Beth may have been napping at House 3, which is why Mike didn’t see her, and if Beth is asleep then the group doesn’t have the book, because initially only Beth knew about it. If the other group never finds the book, they will not have the conversation taking place and they will not discuss decoherence. (I am unsure how exactly this benefits the group because they confirmed it was copies of themselves before reading the book and if they are concerned about an attack on themselves by themselves I don’t see how understand decoherence gives an advantage. More likely the characters are probably just overwhelmed and unsure.) Mike suggests stealing the book from the car outside House 3. Hugh argues that could make it worse and refuses to give up his car keys, and Amir asks “why would we even risk this?” The group wonders if the others are “dark versions” of themselves. Emily argues a chance to literally “find yourself” could be a good thing. Lee wakes up from her nap and Kevin and Mike whisper in the corner about Mike's plan to blackmail himself at House 3 to prevent red Mike from allowing the red group to get the book. He plans to use a secret affair with Beth from 12 years ago as blackmail material. Mike leaves the house. Kevin returns to the group and we hear Hugh point out that the other him would want him to leave himself alone. The group asks Lee if she is okay and she says she is woozy from Beth’s tincture. The group reacts and Beth defends her actions and this time lists the ingredients as “echinacea, goldenseal, passion flower, and a little ketamine.” Emily then gently asks if Beth spiked dinner and the group chimes in with her, which angers Beth. They examine the tincture bottle to see it is ¾ full, and Amir says ketamine can cause hallucinations and paranoia. Hugh retorts that one would need to take the entire bottle, and it would not create such a specific mass hallucination. Laurie and Beth have another quick argument and Laurie leaves the room. Emily watches Beth examine the same vase she examined earlier, and ask Lee where it is from. Lee once again responds “The galaxy thrift store,” confirming Lee and Beth are different from the first scene and this is not House 1. Emily is the only character we have consistently followed and this is the moment she begins to realize this. While she stares at the women in confused horror, Beth remarks “I just wanna wake up and start again, you know?” Hugh and Amir sneak off into another room and it is revealed to the audience that they have red glow sticks. Realizing the red glow stick box is sealed and they are in the wrong house, they decide to leave with the gravity book and the box, but we see them change the marker inside to be an oven mitt. While they make their escape, Mike walks back inside looking distressed. Him and Kevin discuss how Mike nearly broke the car window and stole the book, but decided to just leave the blackmail letter instead. He was going to wait to see the reaction but he got nervous and left. Kevin says he’s been gone for 5 minutes, to which Mike replies “more like 45 minutes.” Mike then begins to drink, (because he is a different Mike) and the group discovers Hugh, Amir, the book, and the box are all gone. Laurie points out they were the first to break off from the group and go to House 3, and they have been acting weird since. Beth gets upset at the implication that her husband is different now, and correctly accuses the others, yelling “you all left too!” Kevin wants to go look but Emily fights back and insists the group stays together, physically standing in his way. Laurie says that this is proof they can’t trust the other house. Everyone gets upset that the “clues” left the house, but Emily says that if the others could create the box at a different house, they must be able to also. Beth and Lee speak in the kitchen about Mike’s drinking, while Beth takes more ketamine tincture and Lee washes dishes. We see her put down the same glass that was broken after the first reality shift, and Mike didn’t recognize. Emily begins to create the box, while Kevin and Laurie have a private moment where we find out Kevin’s work trip is to Vietnam and Laurie knows Emily hasn’t said she will go. Laurie voices doubt about Kevin and Emily’s relationship. Laurie mentions needing to do yoga after particularly intense intimacy between them, contradicting what she said at dinner. They kiss and Kevin stops it and leaves. Beth sees and tells Emily “I think you’re right that everything happens for a reason.” and tells her about the kiss. Mike and Lee have a moment together where she says she believes no other version of her could love him as much, and he says he messed up (most likely alluding to the blackmail letter.) Emily confronts Kevin about the kiss and he denies it. Suddenly, the lights go out again. The group lights candles and hears a car window shatter out front. (A different Emily may have done this) They decide to investigate together, and they all leave the house with blue glow sticks. They find Hugh’s car’s window broken, and they all decide to check on their respective cars. Emily goes off alone (why doesn’t Kevin go with her? She is insistent on staying together, and he doesn’t have a car of his own to check on.) She grabs a ring from her glove box, and puts it on. Kevin (the only thing we know about this Kevin is that he is not the one she left the house with moments ago, we do not know where he is from.) knocks on the window and asks if she is alright, and she replies she is, she just wanted to put the ring on. They make up from “that whole Laurie thing” (Emily is talking about the kiss here, but Kevin could be recalling the story he told at dinner) and embrace. Emily asks if Hugh’s car is okay, but Kevin has no idea what she is talking about. They stare at each other silently until Emily realizes he is a different Kevin and leaves. Back inside, she sees Kevin and shows him the ring again. The group wonders why the window of the car would’ve been broken if there was no book inside. Laurie then yells that she sees someone coming, and Hugh and Amir enter with blue glow sticks and the book. This could be any Hugh and Amir that ended up at a blue glow stick house. They go over the events after Hugh and Amir initially left and Lee points out Hugh is now sporting a plastic bandage on his eyebrow. Amir says they attempted to return home, but discovered everyone had red glow sticks, which they show the group. Emily then asks if Hugh left the note on the door, which he denies. They realize both houses ended up with two notes; one being written and one left on the door, with no reasoning as to how the notes ended up outside. Emily points out the note had to be written at least 4 times, and maybe there was more than two realities existing. Laurie reads from the book (“Quantum decoherence ensures that the different outcomes have no interaction with each other”) and decides they need to figure out how to mark their house. They slowly and organically decide on the exact same method that other houses used in their box: Amir suggests they each roll dice, assign each person a number, and number each picture accordingly. Lee goes to find a box, and discovers an identical one to the one they saw before buried in her closet. As they make the box, they notice they have no picture of Amir to use so they take one. It comes out different from the one they had seen in the other box, which lifts the group’s spirits. Amir refers to it as a “divergent moment.” They also decide to use a blue marker to increase the uniqueness of their box.

Blue Box

During this process, Amir explains Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) which he uses in his career in website development, and suggests the group use one for their box. He mentions this before he, Kevin, and Laurie has a chance to roll. He then lists off examples: a candle, a book (these objects are right in front of him,) then either Beth or Lee says “the oven mitt,” and Emily says “or a ping pong paddle.” and Amir off-handly replies “exactly” which causes Emily to emphasize “exactly…” this is because Emily is from a house where they opened up a ping pong paddle box, but Amir is from a different house. The red group’s MFA was the ping-pong paddle. They decide on a coaster, completing their box. Lee wonders aloud how different their numbers are from the other box, and Emily decides to check. She finds the page where she wrote out the numbers, but they are different and written in green ink. (This is because she left the house after writing the initial list in red.) While she makes this chilling discovery, Hugh does the math for the statistical possible outcomes of the boxes. (Note: this equation is useless to them because the act of creating a box itself is useless as well, given that they have already shifted realities and split up.)

(6 dice rolls ^ 8 people ) * 3 glow stick colors= 5,038,848 possible boxes.

Emily writes out the numbers from the red page (1,1,1,2,4,4,5,6), and compares those with the green ones. Lee comes in and Emily asks he if she remembers what number was on her picture. She replies “5” and Emily notes it. She does this with each person, and tells a drunk Mike what she has discovered. She remembers finding the red numbers in the box, but she found the green numbers in this house’s notepad. After polling the group on their number, she discovers Beth and Lee are from the house they are currently in, House 3, because they never left the house. Mike does not take this seriously. Emily continues to say that Hugh and Amir are from a different house because she saw Hugh’s phone and it wasn’t cracked. She explains that maybe the strange dark zone is a roulette wheel and will spit people out anywhere by chance, and they need to find a way back before the comet passes. There is yet another knock at the door, and a note is slipped under. Hugh grabs it and reads it. “Mike, my friend, Beth + book = Trinidad club. Don’t let it happen. Whatever it takes, buddy.” This is Mike’s blackmail note. Hugh asks Mike to explain and Beth gets a nosebleed. This is the beginning of the fight that shows these are “dark versions.” Hugh realizes the entire group (besides Amir) knew the secret except for him. Mike says it doesn’t even matter because they are not from the same house, and tells the group that they are all from different houses. To prove this, he tells Hugh to show the group his unbroken phone. He does and in amazement, Emily, Laurie, and Kevin tell Hugh his phone has been broken since the beginning of the night. Mike asks Hugh what his MFA was, and Hugh responds “the stapler!” Lee says theirs was an oven mitt, and Emily says theirs was the paddle. Mike, who is the only character to leave the house alone, states his MFA was a napkin.

Hugh, still upset about the affair, continues to confront Mike and says “the reality where I’m from, my best friend wouldn’t sleep with my wife.” to which kevin replies that things “started tonight” and he has slept with her in all of them. (We know this may not be true, as Emily ends up in a reality where she never lost her dance show job.) Hugh then punches Mike and the group breaks them up. Mike talks to Emily and says he might be “the dead cat”; that maybe they are the dark versions of themselves. They stand for a moment while Hugh and Beth fight in another room, and suddenly The Door To Nowhere opens and another Mike (with a green glow stick) begins fighting Mike. The aggressor Mike knocks the other one out, and leaves the house. While the group tends to Mike, Beth begins bleeding heavier from her nose and drips blood on Laurie which causes her to begin screaming Kevin’s name and attempting to remove her dress. Kevin grabs Laurie and attempts to calm her. Emily, watching the group become completely unhinged (dark versions), opens the front door and finds one of the “Hey there!” notes. Giving one last glance to the group, she decides to leave on her own. (She decides to make use of the reality shifts and look for a new, happy home where she made all the right choices.) She walks through the dark zone and finds a box with a monkey inside. She approaches the house and sees a version of herself through the window at the table arguing with Lee, then she moves on. She travels on and looks into each house she comes across, always finding fighting. One house has two Mikes, gagged and tied to chairs, while one has a happy, embracing Kevin and Laurie while the group calls her “bad news”. She stops to glance at the comet, directly above her. Eventually she discovers a house where everyone is happy and chatting in the living room. (This is a house that never realized shifts could be happening.) She finds the baseball bat outside the back door and sneaks inside. She peeks into the living room and overhears the group discuss their trip to Vietnam and investing in San Francisco ballet, indicating in this reality she made all the right choices. She grabs Beth’s tincture, and leaves through the back (interestingly, after leaving the house at this moment, she still is able to break the glass and subdue the Emily at the right house. Maybe it is not the house, but the property.)

Cut to the happy living room. Everyone is joking around and suddenly they hear glass breaking outside. Mike suggests bringing glow sticks to check it out but the group laughs and brushes the idea off. They head outside together, and they discover Hugh’s car windshield was smashed. (This is the first time we see the windshield smashed instead of the window. This may mean an Emily was not the mystery culprit earlier in the movie, or it may mean the mere act of blass breaking is the important aspect to pay attention to.) Like earlier, the group decides to split up (again, this causes no tangible effect on reality) and check on their own vehicles, and Emily makes her way over to hers alone. (Once again, Kevin stays behind. Why? He yells out “you okay?” and she affirms, which may have given our Emily her cue.) While grabbing the ring, the Emily that left her house attacks the happy Emily and knocks her out with the ketamine, and then places her in her trunk, adorning her sweater. She comes back into the house and the group asks her what she was doing and she said she was admiring the comet. Beth once again points out Emily came in through The Door To Nowhere, and the group decides to go check out the comet, although Emily objects (because she doesn’t want to risk losing her place in this reality). They step outside just in time to witness the comet break up into pieces, and Kevin mentions Katherine Meriss understudying Emily. Then the power goes out for a brief moment. (One can argue this is not a cut, because it is brief and we hear audio throughout.) Watching the group from inside without a sweater on, Emily discovers the injured emily has broken free and made it to the house. She confronts her in the bathroom while the lights flicker and hits her in the head with the toilet tank lid, knocking her out once again. As she places the other Emily in the bathtub, Lee knocks. Emily says she will be right out, and notices her ring is gone, presumably lost in the struggle. She quickly looks around and then decides to take the ring from the Emily in the bathtub. She cleans the small amount of blood and leaves the bathroom, leaving her ring behind on the floor. She walks into the living room to see everyone but only makes it a few steps before collapsing. (This may mark the moment the box “opens” for Emily.)

Cut to Emily waking on a couch. It is morning. She looks around and finds Lee happily making breakfast. She heads for the bathroom where she left the other Emily, but she isn’t there. Beth exits the shower and asks Emily if she’s feeling better, proving the bathroom has been empty for a while. Emily steps outside (no longer relevant because the comet has passed) and examines Hugh’s vehicle, which still has a shattered windshield and the book in the backseat. Kevin finds her and asks in she is okay because she “totally passed out last night,” and hands her the ring she lost in the bathroom. He gets a phone call and turns away, as she compares the ring Kevin just gave her, and the identical ring on her finger. Kevin says “That’s weird, it’s you calling me,” picks up, and after a few moments of silence, looks at Emily. (This is most likely the Emily from the tub.)

Cut to black.

© Arrien Gadue, 2019