The Vast of Night
The Vast of Night is a 2019 American science fiction mystery film directed by Andrew Patterson, and starring Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz. The film is written by Andrew Patterson under the pseudonym of James Montague, and Craig W. Sanger. The film is set in 1950s New Mexico, a young switchboard operator and a radio disc jockey discover a mysterious audio frequency that could be extraterrestrial in origin.
The Vast of Night premiered at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival in January 2019. Amazon Studios acquired distribution rights to the film and released it on May 29, 2020, including drive-in theaters in the United States and via video-on-demand on Prime Video. The film's plot is said to be loosely based on the Kecksburg UFO incident and Foss Lake Disappearances.
Plot
In 1950s Cayuga, New Mexico, teenage disc jockey Everett helps prepare for a high school basketball game. He and his friend Fay test out her new tape recorder, and Everett walks her to her job as a switchboard operator before starting his own night shift at the radio station. Fay listens to Everett's show, which is interrupted by a mysterious audio signal. Fielding calls about a strange wind-like phenomenon from the sky, she hears the same signal over the phone line; her connections drop when she calls friends about the signal. Fay calls Everett, who asks his listeners for information about the signal, which he broadcasts on the air.A man named Billy calls, and Everett broadcasts him live. Billy explains that he served in the military, and was flown to a highly secretive location in the desert. Warned that telling anyone about the classified project would "endanger America", he and the other personnel built a large underground bunker to house an enormous unknown object. Flying away from the facility, he heard the same unexplained signal on the plane's radio. Billy developed a lung condition that he believes was caused by his time in the desert, and learned of other instances of the military burying similar cargo in secret locations, where the same signal was heard. He explains that the sound appears to be a communication signal, sometimes transmitted higher than any man-made object could fly.
The call is briefly disconnected, but Billy calls back and reveals that he and the other personnel chosen for these projects were all African American or Mexican, to ensure they were less likely to be believed by the public. A friend of his managed to record the signal, and sent copies to Billy and others who worked on the projects; one tape was given to an Air Force general in Cayuga, now deceased. Fay realizes that his tapes were given to the local library, and steals them. Billy is disconnected, and Everett and Fay find the recording of the signal and broadcast it, but the radio station’s power is knocked out. They race to the switchboard office, where Fay receives numerous reports of "something in the sky", and they meet Gerald and Bertsie, who have been driving in pursuit of the same unidentified flying object. An elderly woman named Mabel calls and offers to provide more information about the signal.
Everett and Fay go to Mabel's home, where they find her reciting a message in an unknown language. With Everett recording their conversation, Mabel claims that the phenomena seen across town are spaceships, piloted by aliens who use their message to hypnotize and abduct humans. She believes the aliens will target isolated people while most of the town is at the basketball game, and suspects the aliens are responsible for sowing conflict in humanity, from alcoholism to war. Mabel asks to be taken to the alien ship to reunite with her son, who was abducted years ago. Unconvinced, Everett leaves with Fay, who collects her baby sister Maddie, and they are picked up by Gerald and Bertsie. Everett plays his recording of Mabel speaking the alien message, which sends Gerald and Bertsie into a trance; they nearly crash the car, and Everett and Fay flee with Maddie into the woods.
Everett and Fay realize that the aliens are real, and have already arrived above the town. They watch as a spaceship rejoins the much larger mothership, and the wind begins swirling around them. As the crowd leaves the basketball game, Everett, Fay, and Maddie are gone; only their footprints and the tape recorder remain.
Cast
- Sierra McCormick as Fay Crocker
- Jake Horowitz as Everett Sloan
- Gail Cronauer as Mabel Blanche
- Bruce Davis as Billy
- Greg Peyton as Benny
Production
Patterson financed the film himself with earnings from his work producing commercials and shorts for the Oklahoma City Thunder and others. It was filmed in three to four weeks at a cost of $700,000.
The film was shot mostly in Whitney, Texas during the fall of 2016 starting September. The town was selected after looking through many towns to find one with the right gymnasium. In order to get the period details correct, the production team removed the three-point line of the basketball court in the gym at a cost of $20,000, and they found functional switchboards which were used at that time. The cinematographer for the film was M.I. Littin-Menz. Patterson spent a year editing the film.
Release
The film premiered at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival, and went on to screen at several other film festivals.Amazon Studios acquired the movie in September 2019, and the trailer was released on February 6, 2020. The film was released in drive-in cinemas nationally on May 15, 2020, and on Amazon Prime on May 29.
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 209 reviews, with an average rating of 7.84/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "An engrossing sci-fi thriller that transcends its period trappings, The Vast of Night suggests great things for debuting director Andrew Patterson." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 84 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".David Fear of Rolling Stone called the film an "ingenious debut from director Andrew Patterson." Katie Rife of The A.V. Club wrote that it "manages to be eerie and compelling" and "despite its intergalactic scope, this is an intimate, character-driven film." Amy Taubin of Film Comment called it "a display of visionary moviemaking intelligence," comparing it to first features by directors such as Richard Kelly and Christopher Nolan. Meg Shields of Film School Rejects commended the sound design as "inescapable and essential" and M.I. Littin-Menz's camerawork as "simply amazing." Varietys Amy Nicholson praised the film as charming and inventive, writing, "At the midpoint, Patterson wows with a tracking shot that seems to race a half-mile down a quiet street, take a left-hook through a parking lot, sprint through an ongoing basketball game, and zip up the crowded bleachers before plunging out of a window. It's effective razzle-dazzle that will probably get the young Oklahoman hired to make something 20 times The Vast of Nights budget. Yet, the ambition behind it is just as impressive — as is the crew’s creativity at spinning financial limitations into magic."