It
really was a weather balloon. If you doubt it, check out the articles in The Skeptical Inquiry debunking the Roswell
UFO myth. It is a good story, but it is just a story. Nevertheless, the need to
believe has made New Mexico ground zero for the flying saucer faithful. Apart
from the Roswell rumor-mongering, New Mexico’s wide-open deserts and low population
density make fictional Cayuga, NM a suitable location for paranormal goings-on
in Andrew Patterson’s The Vast of Night, the
plucky microbudget winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at
the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival.
Vast of Night is ostensibly an
episode of a 1950s science fiction anthology show called Paradox Theater that we start watching on a vintage black-and-white
vacuum tube television, before the picture morphs into the evocatively washed
out color of the characters’ world. Everett is a cocky high school student who
works part-time for the local AM radio station. Everyone in town probably
assumes he and Fay will eventually become a couple, but for now, they just
bicker too much. Tonight, he is happily helping her get the hang of the new
portable tape recorder she just ordered from Montgomery Ward.
Nearly
everyone in town will be at the big high school basketball game, but he will be
on the air at WOTW and she will be covering the town’s telephone switchboard.
When reports of strange lights in the sky start to come in, the ambiguous couple
will be able to coordinate their efforts to investigate. It turns out,
something downright Roswellian might be afoot, based on claims of “Billy,” a
former US Air Force officer, who calls into Everett’s show.
Frankly,
it is shocking how well put together Vast
is, especially given its extreme budget constraints. It is definitely one
of the best looking, smartest written X-Files-esque
films in decades. Patterson and cinematographer Miguel Ioann Littin Menz give
it an intimate vibe with their claustrophobic long takes, but they also capture
a sense of the lonely emptiness of the small town when their restless camera
pans from one location to another during transitional scenes. Strange Invaders, the cult favorite from 1983, would be a logical comparison
title, in terms of themes and vibe, but Vast
is a far superior film.
The
period details and visual effects are definitely impressive, but the chemistry
between Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz, as Fay and Everett, respectively,
is what really elevates Vast. They
are terrific together and they both absolutely knock out of the park screenwriters
James Montague & Craig W. Sanger’s long, knotty passages of dialogue. They
also get first class support from the rest of the ensemble, including the
pitch-perfect heard-but-not-seen Bruce Davis as Billy and Gail Cronauer, who
holds viewers absolutely rapt as Mabel Blanche, another eye witness of sorts.
Vast of Night is a film you
really should see in a darkened theater, because it would be a shame to let the
distractions of mundane life break the spell Patterson and his actors cast over
the audience. Granted, the story itself is hardly groundbreaking, but Patterson’s
mastery of mood, the palpable sense of place, and the work of his two co-leads
are really quite special. Very highly recommended, The Vast of Night should have a long life ahead of it with genre
film fans, after winning the Audience Award at this year’s Slamdance Film
Festival.