The Vast of Night
Andrew Patterson
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Amazon Prime Video from 29 May
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COMING up next: an odd frequency is spreading through a small town in New Mexico, and two locals must work out what is going on.
Feel familiar? That鈥檚 because The Vast of Night begins like a story from The Twilight Zone. This 1950s-set sci-fi flick is framed as an episode of a fictional equivalent called Paradox Theatre, and is intermittently played through the screen of an antique television.
Directed by Andrew Patterson, the film focuses on teenager Fay (Sierra McCormick) and her slightly older peer Everett (Jake Horowitz). With a basketball game at the local school drawing the attention of most of the residents of Cayuga, New Mexico, the rest of the town is unusually deserted. Neither Fay nor Everett are watching the match: she has a gig operating Cayuga鈥檚 telephone switchboard and he has his own show on the local radio station.
It is when Fay is connecting callers through the switchboard that she comes across a strange frequency playing on one of the lines. After unsuccessfully consulting some of the other operators to see if they have heard something similar, she decides to share it with Everett.
鈥淥ver the course of one night, cynicism turns to fear and disbelief as Fay and Everett find the origin of the sound鈥�
Keen for a juicy scoop, he plays the sound on air in a bid to reach out to listeners who might recognise it. Soon, someone calls: an old man named Billy (Bruce Davis) who has heard the sound before while working on secret operations for the US government.
Its central plot of young people uncovering a mystery with hints of government conspiracy and the supernatural makes The Vast of Night feel rather like Stranger Things. Yet the film is far more artsy and slower paced than Netflix鈥檚 hit series.
It is filled with sweeping shots of the town and long stretches of narration, first between Fay and Everett and later through the ominous stories of those who are connected to the mysterious frequency.
鈥淣o one knows they鈥檙e being affected 鈥� we all work out other reasons to justify our actions,鈥� says Mabel Blanche (Gail Cronauer), an older woman with an important story to tell about the frequency and why nobody seems to have noticed its effects. Over the course of one night, cynicism turns to fear and disbelief as Fay and Everett discover the origin of the sound and what it leads to.
In his feature debut, Patterson does a good job of making a lot out of a little. There are no expensive special effects to help drive the plot forward. Instead, it is the dialogue and relationship between Fay and Everett that carries the film.
Unfortunately, the pay-off is bound to leave some viewers unsatisfied. Others, however, will relish The Vast of Night鈥榮 gradual build and high-nostalgia aesthetic, not to mention its attempt to do something a little bit different.
