On May 29, 2020, Amazon Prime quietly released one of the best sci-fi films in decades: The Vast of Night. The debut feature from Andrew Patterson is a moody, character-driven tale about making contact with extraterrestrials in 1950s Cayuga, New Mexico. Inspired by classic news stories recanting strange disappearances and unexplainable objects flying in the sky, The Vast of Night focuses on two teens who realize something is amiss when they pick up a bizarre audio signal. With most of their town attending the first basketball game of the season at the high school gymnasium, the young sleuths traverse the abandoned, shadowy streets of Cayuga in search of the truth.
Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz play the teens, a switchboard operator and radio DJ obsessed with technology, respectively. As McCormick’s character Fay settles into her night swift, she turns on the radio program hosted by Horowitz’s character Everett. Everett’s broadcast is interrupted by an eerie noise, the same noise Fay hears over her phone lines. Operating the behemoth switchboard, Fay eventually dials into Everett’s show about the signal, and he appeals to his listeners to call in if they see or hear anything else. This opens up the proverbial floodgates, leading the jejune alien chasers toward a shocking conclusion.
The Vast of Night relies on mysterious monologues from callers to bring audiences into Fay and Everett’s reality. A black man named Billy calls in, and Everett interviews him live on air. Billy, a military veteran, shares details of classified projects involving large extraterrestrial spacecraft and experiments with unfamiliar audio signals. Calls surge from the outskirts of town as more residents see something in the sky. Everett and Fay visit a caller in person, an elderly woman named Mabel, who claims her son was abducted decades earlier by the same aliens circling Cayuga. Eventually, Everett and Fay find themselves deep in the woods, equipped with only Fay’s brand new tape recorder, looking up in the sky for signs of life.
What makes The Vast of Night so different from other alien invasion films is its understated style. In lieu of action-packed sequences or violent confrontations, the film’s themes evolve from the perspective of two excited high schoolers who believe they are the key to proving alien life actually exists. Elation, wonder, and passion fill every scene – from the wide shots of town to the close-up shots of characters’ euphoric faces. Beneath this baseline eagerness, though, exists a sense that Fay and Everett are getting in over their heads. The dangerous consequences of establishing contact with the unknown haunt every scene as well.
The Vast of Night draws many parallels to sci-fi anthology series like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits with its tone and subject matter. Like its predecessors, the movie utilizes a frame narrative that feels very familiar to audiences. As the camera focuses on a vintage television where the feature presentation will presumably air, a narrator sets the scene, saying, “You are entering into a realm between clandestine and forgotten, a slipstream caught between channels… You are entering Paradox Theater.” The Vast of Night returns to the TV set, as well as to the unsettling music that plays in the opening sequence, as the movie progresses. This self-aware narrative technique pays homage to old sci-fi TV while also lampooning it.
Beyond these unique elements exists a sea of social commentary that also makes The Vast of Night stand out from its contemporaries. References to communism and the Cold War emphasize the paranoid, nervous nature of 1950s life, fueled by outlandish politicians like Joseph McCarthy – who labeled anyone he didn’t like a Soviet spy. Instead of simply reveling in the pervasive sense of distrust at the time, The Vast of Night offers up a critique of 1950s America with Billy’s testimony on Everett’s radio show. Billy says only African Americans and Mexicans were selected for the covert military operation he participated in, as the government knew a racially divided public wouldn’t believe anyone who attempted to blow the whistle on the experiments. Billy suffers from enduring health issues, and he blames whatever he was exposed to in the desert.
Andrew Patterson finds compelling ways to draw viewers into his film with just $700,000. Patterson’s minimal budget is used for maximum effect through sets, sound design, and mercurial pacing that require skilled camerawork. Patterson and his crew managed to recreate an authentic 1950s small-town thanks to their meticulous scouting efforts across Texas. Frequent trips to thrift stores and discount bins made the film’s impeccable costuming possible. The few special effects employed in The Vast of Night don’t arrive until the very end of the movie, and they wouldn’t work if it wasn’t for all the atmospheric dialogue that precedes them.
The Vast of Night is a bold, audacious debut from Andrew Patterson that showcases his rare talent as a moviemaker. Patterson breathes new life into a well-known genre trope – humans interacting with aliens – by focusing his creative energy on how his story is told rather than on what is actually being told. Stunning visual sequences and engaging discourse between characters fuel much of the movie’s emotional undercurrents. Few films manage to achieve the level of technical excellence displayed in The Vast of Night, even films with much larger budgets. Ultimately, The Vast of Night returns sci-fi to its visionary roots by building a world whose mundane trappings are rife with fantastical possibilities.
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