Taking place in New Mexico during the 1950s, the story follows two young friends. Fay (Sarah McCormick), a High School student and local telephone switchboard operator, and Everett (Jake Horowitz), Disc Jockey & Radio Host of the local station. One night during their local High School Basketball game, our heroes are toiling the night away at their respected posts. Things seem to be running normally. That is until Fay begins hearing a strange sound over the phone lines. At first, she brushes it off as unexpected interference, but when she starts hearing it over multiple lines, and suddenly getting cut off for no sound reason, she asks Everett to look into it. Upon listening to the sound, Everett plays it over the radio, urging his listeners to call and explain if they recognize it. The first caller chimes in, and from there, everything takes a turn for the surreal. The caller claims that it is the same sound he heard when he was working for a top-secret government project that, apparently, involved U.F.O.'s. That sound returning to the airwaves means they are out there again, and they are up to something. Now, Fay and Everett must solve the mystery before they lose their chance...or worse.
On the surface, there are a ton of aspects to this film I admire. From the very beginning of the film, it is evident that this is intended to be an homage to classic science fiction works of the time. Most notably, The Twilight Zone. In fact, the film opens with a 50's style television playing a kind of parody of the same show titled Paradox Theater, complete with a spot on Rod Serling impersonation. The radio station where Everett works is called the WOTW Station, which stands for War of the Worlds. A reference to another science fiction classic, and the famous broadcast of the same story by Orson Wells. Nearly every other frame of this movie is littered with references and homages to classic science fiction.
The cast is incredible. The two leads despite not having the best material to work with (more on that in a moment), deliver convincing and tangible performances. Sarah McCormick, in particular, succeeds in embodying the mannerisms and attitude often associated with classic 50s movies. She clearly did her homework to deliver an authentic presentation. I hope to see more of her in the future.
The cinematography is downright gorgeous! The film was shot on high-end digital cameras, but it was later processed to look more like old fashioned film. Complete with lots of grain, or what we now call noise. I love this feature in my own images, as I have never liked the idea of a thoroughly "clean" image. Grain/Noise gives a sense of texture to an image, creating movement out of stillness. Which, in turn, makes any scene feel more alive. The lighting is atmospheric and appropriately eerie. Befitting the mysterious tone of the story. This may very well be a near-perfect example of how to shoot dark scenes accurately.
Unfortunately, all of those good graces are shattered by the execution of the film. The most significant problem being that director Andrew Patterson does not seem to understand one of the most important aspects of filmmaking: the manipulation of space & time and the creation of movement through editing.
For starters, the pacing of this film is atrocious! There are tracking shots primarily in ultra-wide angles that go on for too long, scenes with repetitive dialogue that don't seem to add anything relevant to the story, and a lack of visual variety that makes the whole presentation feel too one-note. There is one scene where Fay is on the phoneline switchboard having conversations with various people, and it is all done in a single nearly static shot for almost ten minutes. This is also the scene in which we are introduced to the phenomenon that kick starts the mystery of the story, but it takes so damn long to get moving that, by the time it started, I lost interest. The scene was so excessively long with more repetitive dialogue that I no longer cared about the mystery, and just wanted the film to move on.
This "single long take" style of shooting is littered throughout the whole film, and it gets incredibly annoying after a while. When it's not showing you an unbroken shot, it will suddenly fade away into nothing. Literally! There's a scene where Everett is talking with someone over the phone about the nature of the mysterious sound he played over the radio, and it will occasionally fade to a black screen with only the audio of the conversation remaining. I can only suspect that the idea was to simulate the experience of listening to an old-fashioned radio drama, as evidenced by one shot of a radio playing the conversation between Everett and the mystery caller. Which, if the scene was a whole lot shorter, might have worked. Instead, it just feels like padding, dragging out an overly long moment.
The Vast of Night feels like a feature film that doesn't want to be a feature film. This concept should have been a twenty-minute short film, or at the very least, a thirty-minute radio drama. While I applaud the attempts to pay homage to classic science fiction and radio shows, the movie is, to put it plainly, trying too hard. Despite being in a visual medium, it refuses to utilize compelling visuals. Desperately trying to remain a radio play where audio and dialogue are all that is required. Except, that is not enough to make a compelling film, where visuals are what convey a story. In movies, sound must be in service of the visuals and not the other way around.
At the time of this writing, The Vast of Night is available to stream on Amazon Prime. If you're still even a little curious about it, I personally don't really recommend you waste your time with it. There is a reason it was rejected by over a dozen film festivals.
Ladies & gentlemen, I am TheNorm, thank you all for reading.
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