Director: Andrew Patterson
Where can I watch?: The Vast of Night is streaming on Prime Video
Rating: 3.5/5
Review: As debuts go, Andrew Patterson's The Vast of Night is a pretty solid outing. Stripping away the graphics, explosions and outer-space drama that usually accompanies sci-fi films, Patterson brings it all back to basics with an eerie nighttime drama that cleverly utilises the static of retro televisions and blank screens to create a suspenseful, low budget watch. The cast is small, with just two central protagonists: arrogant radio host Everett (Jake Horowitz) and switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick). Both have dreams of getting out of their old frontier town in New Mexico and, through very natural conversation (there's no forced exposition here!), their relationship develops as they begin to unpick the mysterious noise that's passing through the radio signals. Patterson focuses more on speech than action, with long scenes in which the camera unflinchingly studies a single face as they either receive or give information, encouraging the audience to hang on every word. Indeed, the whole plot unravels during such conversations, with a focus on storytelling and reporting taking centre stage. The Vast of Night looks very stylish too, with an unprocessed, grainy quality throughout, and a clever montage in which the camera sweeps in a single motion from Fay's switchboard, through the empty streets, to Everett's radio station. Unfortunately, for me, it falls down at the final hurdle, which is what prevents the film from reaching that four star status, but The Vast of Night is certainly still worth a watch and firmly introduces Andrew Paterson as a new voice in cinema.
A COVID-19 Must-Watch?: *SPOILER ALERT* OK, it's pretty obvious from the outset that The Vast of Night is about extra-terrestrials. Even though the aliens are never referred to as such, instead called 'the people in the sky', it's very clear what our protagonists are up against. It seems strange to me, then, that in the final few frames, the director should choose to explicitly depict these other lifeforms when the rest of the film has tiptoed around expressing the subject so objectively. It felt like a misstep to me, especially as the previous one and a half hours are more focused on the story of the aliens themselves. Still, it's an entertaining watch up until then, cleverly subverting the alien genre as it goes.
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