Movie Review : The Vast of Night (2020)
The film industry is in a weird place. Theaters are operating below full capacity because of the coronavirus and major studioWs are withholding blockbuster releases, leaving audiences nothing much to a fucking movie ticket for. In Montreal, 1917 is STILL in theaters. Because of that, we’re turning to streaming platforms and word-of-mouth to get our fix. That means good movies are getting popular and finding their audience for the right reasons again.
Good movies like Andrew Patterson’s atmospheric indie science fiction darling The Vast of Night.
Set in Cayuga, New Mexico in the 1950s, The Vast of Night tells the story of a teenage radio DJ named Everett Sloan (Jake Horowitz) and a switchboard operator named Fay (Sierra McCormick). They are both working on a Friday night where a basketball game mobilizes the majority of townsfolk. When Everett’s show is interrupted by a mysterious audio signal, Fay starts receiving mysterious calls about a mysterious object floating over Cayuga’s sky.
The Vast of Night is obviously a low budget endeavor. It is thoroughly uninterested in special effects or conventional science fiction. Not unlike the old school Twilight Zone episodes it clearly draws inspiration from, it is interested in our relationship to the unknown. Everett and Fay want to answer one question: what the fuck is that signal jamming his radio show? No one has a definite answer for them. They have to build an understanding from weird testimonies.
I’ve discussed this narrative technique before, mostly when reviewing horror movies. The best horror movies never overexplain things and leave gaps in their storytelling, because the what you will tell yourself to bridge these gaps will always be scarier. The Vast of Night operates with that logic, but takes it to a meta level. The characters in the movie are trying to bridge the gaps of the unexplained phenomenon they’re witnessing and it works beautifully.
That said, The Vast of Night is a little bit on the contemplative side. It is a slow, atmospheric movie and not much happens throughout its 90 minutes. People who have seen too many conventionally told movies will get a kick out of it because it stands out by doing the little things originally. For example: there’s very little exposition. You get to know the characters by how they interact with each other. It conceals its lack of budget by being quirky and creative.
I liked The Vast of Night. It’s a fun and creative movie that constantly finds resourceful ways to swerve around its financial limitations. Sure, it can get frustratingly slow at times. One of the big reveals is a rambling monologue by an old lady. It’s not perfect by any means. But it’s a movie that does things differently and watching it while Marvel, Christopher Nolan and others aren’t in theaters will help you expand your horizons and demand more out of them.
7.4/10
